


A Lily Growing Thorns

by Quivo (quivo)



Series: Scenes on a Darkened Path [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dubious Consent, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Marauders' Era, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Rape Fantasy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Seer Evan Rosier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:17:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 72,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quivo/pseuds/Quivo
Summary: The strange thing between Lily and Evan starts as sex, but doesn't end that way. It never ends at all.





	1. hogwarts and after

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for dubcon, noncon and angsty dark shit. Note that this is tagged with 'underage' solely because the characters start getting it on while at Hogwarts. For more specific warnings, check out the endnotes.
> 
> My favorite part of writing this (apart from the dirtywrong sex) was sort of trying to twist things into a shape that could, if viewed from a distance, rub along fairly well with the canon version of what happened. If and when you chance to comment, let me know if that at all worked for you or not. 
> 
> Most of all, though, please enjoy, if you can, the outpourings of my id.

## hogwarts

Evan Rosier was the first boy to lick Lily Evans’ cunt.

Christ. If anyone found out…

If? _When._ It would be when, if she didn’t stop it, if she went on being mad enough to let him, let him stroke his smooth, warm hands up the insides of her thighs, up and up beneath her skirt, just shy of the aching point between her legs that kept on betraying her.

“You can’t,” she’d said, that first time, breathless.

“Oh?” His voice had been rich in her ear, bright with amusement, as if this were just the usual game, Slytherin against Gryffindor, taunts thrown, rude comments and rude faces made, all in fun, mostly in fun, with the bitter edge brought by events outside of school. “Stop me, then.”

She didn’t know why she hadn’t. Her hand had shaken, then, tightening around her wand, but she hadn’t done the obvious thing, hadn’t pointed it at him, hadn’t had even the first syllable of an appropriate spell come to mind. She’d just held her wand tightly, and held it, and held it, and squirmed in her library chair, desperate, desperately aroused. That he was doing _that_ to her– to _her_! That he pulled her knickers the whole way off, sliding them easily down her shaking legs, then folding them away into his pocket–!

He’d never given them back.

Lily remembered every touch. Remembered his heavy breaths, remembered the slick sounds he made as he worked his mouth on her. He’d moaned, his tongue inside her, and she had felt it, and she had come, helplessly, angling into the pressure, the small, teasing thrusts of his lips, his tongue. The next sound she’d heard had been her wand clattering to the floor. Rolling.

Breathing heavily, still, Evan had gone after it. Handed it to her with all courtesy, as if he hadn’t just– as if he was only wiping his mouth for no important reason. As if he weren’t smiling smugly down at her, having proved her the mudblood slut that she knew, _knew_ some of the older pureblood boys desperately wished she were.

Flushed, shaking, unable to look at him directly, Lily had held out her hand, and felt a sick, guilty relief that all he did was put her wand in it without a word. Then he came close in, looming over her the way she’d feared, and said: “lovely, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t,” Lily had said, her voice shaking a little, then firming up, as she got hold of herself. “I didn’t…”

“You can tell yourself I forced you,” Evan said, his tone still light. He smiled, too. Grinned, really. “You can tell yourself you’ll only meet me again, say, in a week’s time, same time, same place, because you’re afraid I’ll tell everyone about you.”

Lily did not remember closing her eyes at that point– it had just happened, somehow. She only knew it had happened because she didn’t realize Evan was going to kiss her on the cheek until she felt his breath there, and then the press of his lips. All she had been able to think, at that moment, was that he smelled like her. That he’d wanted to, desperately, enough to take her tired, annoyed, deliberately dirty joke seriously.

“I shouldn’t have said it,” she’d said, half to him, half to herself, as he pulled away from her. “I shouldn’t have let you do it.”

“On the blood in my veins,” Evan Rosier had said, his voice low, his cadence oddly formal, “I will tell no one, living or dead, that I have drunk of you.” And then he _cut his fucking thumb_ , and presented it to her, holding it before her mouth, as if, as if… “Lick it.”

And she did lick it. Like the same idiot that had said to him, jeeringly, that if he was that mad for her, he could get down on his knees and beg to lick her cunny, as that was the only way she’d countenance a bastard like him touching her. And then the same idiot that had let him fucking do it.

 _Oh, god,_ Lily had thought, watching the way he smiled, as she licked his finger. _What have I done?_ She was thinking the same thing a week later, as she fidgeted restlessly in the same seat at the same table, not quite telling herself anything about what she was doing. Not quite allowing herself to think.

He licked her then, too. Comfortably, dropping to his knees right after he walked up, cast a privacy ward, and smiled, wolfishly. Lily, knowing the spell, had let herself be loud. He’d warranted it– got his tongue right inside her, got his fingers in the mix, sucked and pinched and rubbed and licked and moaned, lustily, as he tasted of her.

“It’s so good,” she heard herself sob, out loud. She cringed. She came so hard that she shook against him (again, like the first time) for one long, embarrassing moment. When Evan finally stood up, unsteady on his feet, and undid his drawers and took out his cock, eyeing her as he stroked it, she just watched, instead of letting herself think about how close she probably was to getting raped.

 _I’d like it,_ she found herself thinking, with horror, as she watched him. _If it was him, he’d make sure I liked it._

He could have done anything to her, in that moment. She’d been shocked enough, guilty enough, boneless enough that she might just have let him. Instead, Evan Rosier looked at her through his lashes and said, “do me too, Evans?” And had kept on fluttering his lashes at her as she rolled her eyes and shook her head and told him he was a massive idiot.

“Massive?” he had said, delightedly, his eyes comically wide. “Well, all right, then; if you don’t want to do it, you can just watch me.”

“I don’t want to _watch_ you,” Lily had spat. “And I’m certainly not sucking your stupid tiny cock.”

Two guesses as to what she found herself doing.

Yeah.

That’s right.

It was so embarrassing.

Not the actual… act, though it could have been, she was certainly nervous enough. No, it was the thoughts in her head, as Evan came forward, smiling slightly, displaying himself. _What are you doing?_ her brain kept demanding. _What in the bloody fucking hell are you doing, Lily Evans?_

 _He wants it,_ Lily found herself thinking, in response to that. The last thing she’d said to him before she started in was, “should you be, er, leaking? Like that?” Evan’s answer had been a low, fervent, “if I’m enjoying myself, oh, yes.” So it was true, in a way, unmistakably, that he wanted it. Only…

 _Since when do you care to give one of_ them _what_ they _want?_ her brain had fired back, and she hadn’t had an answer. Or her mouth had been too full of him– she’d never been good at thinking while she ate, and she’d always hated how everyone else seemed to be able to do it, to switch from swallowing to speech.

She’d sucked Evan Rosier’s cock like it was the only thing going. There was no excuse for it, no explanation. He’d given her hints, and she’d followed them. _Teeth… just a little’s good, don’t… fuck, yes, do that._

_Your mouth, Evans, your beautiful fucking mouth… Oh, lick me again, just like that…_

_He’d kill me, if he ever found out._ He hadn’t said who he meant, but the wild light in his eyes had meant Severus, to her, somehow. _Maybe,_ he’d added, grinning, _not without polyjuicing into me first, for one more go…_

That had shaken her. Not the thought of Severus wanting her that badly, no; she’d known, for a long while now, that he didn’t want her that way. It had been third year, just the very end of it, and she’d thought maybe it would slow him down, reverse his drift from her, if she… And of course it had been a disaster. The one, awkward kiss, the way she’d pulled away, thinking it was alright, but could have gone better, only to see how very panicked, how very upset Severus had looked. Which was the way she’d felt, watching him practically run away, after.

Worse, over the summer, Severus had lectured her, without quite looking her in the eye, warning her against trying the same sort of thing with a boy who wasn’t raised right, wasn’t gentlemanly. Which, by that time, was easily understood, by her, to mean any pureblood boy, or really any boy at Hogwarts, none of whom had any real obligation to be gentlemanly to a muggleborn like her.

If Severus ever found out, ever came to know that she’d done this, opening herself up, willingly…

She’d had to stop, then, her hands shaking as she pushed at Evan’s hips, as she pushed and thought wildly of what it would feel like if he ignored her. Evan, frowning, had pulled away and taken her up into his arms and held her while she cried in choked, panicked sobs.

“He’ll kill me,” Lily had sobbed, half-meaning it, and Evan had stroked her hair and said no, never, impossible. Then he had sworn, his voice warm in her ear, another vow: that Severus Snape did not know what had passed between them, and never would, from his lips, on pain of death.

After that… after that rush of magic, stronger and stranger than the time before, the little twisty twinge she’d felt after licking his thumb, Lily was too overwhelmed, too feverish to stop him.

That was what she tried to tell herself, anyway. She’d known it would hurt. She’d known what he was doing, what he wanted when he came in close and pressed against her, but she’d let him do it anyway. She’d even been the one to spread her legs for him, to let him…

Then, once he’d slowed, barely moving inside her, it began to feel good. Too good, too sweet, the painful slide of Rosier’s thick cock in and out of her. She moaned his name, and he breathed hers. She braced against the rattling desk, she hoped they wouldn’t be found, she apologized, out loud, shaking with fear, told him she was sorry she was such a slut.

“It’s all right,” he’d said, hotly. “You can be a slut for me, just for me, Evans. I’ll never tell, they’ll never know, not a single fucking one of them.”

“I’ll know,” Lily had whispered, and of course his response had been to joke about Obliviating her. He was that kind of awful, Evan Rosier; in all the six years she’d known him, she’d never known him not to try to draw reluctant laughter at the worst possible time. She’d hated him for that, hated that she ever found him even a little bit funny, and when she told him that, he laughed long and low as he fucked her.

“I’ve been showing off, you know,” he told her. “ _Just_ for you, my dear.” And in that moment, she could not help but believe him.

After was, of course, different. Nearly painful.

 _Are you very sore?_ The unsaid implication that he’d known she was a virgin, that he’d had not the slightest doubt in her purity, before– before he’d fucked her. _Let me try a spell that will help._

It helped. Somehow, she managed not to cry at that, not to cry at anything, despite how much she wanted to. She kissed him, instead, because she’d been wanting to, because she’d _been_ wanting to, and hating herself for wanting to, since maybe the latter half of third year. He had been in France, for Easter, and had boasted of it. Lily had rolled her eyes at him and then found herself noticing just how well he looked when he was a little more browned. How his lips curled mockingly when he smiled, even when he was smiling at someone he supposedly liked.

She didn’t tell him any of that, though. Her limits might not have been quite what she thought, what she hoped, but they did still exist. Evan Rosier, Lily told herself, was a liar and a Slytherin born, and if he was nice now, his hands soft on her, his eyes tender as he looked at her, it was because he was getting what he wanted, and wished to keep it that way.

* * *

He kept it that way for… oh, five whole months. Through Christmas. Almost into Easter. James was being a bit more serious by then, not just in how he courted her, but in the rest of his behaviour, but all Lily could think of, sometimes, was how she’d brought him up to Evan, once, and Evan had laughed, and said, as he entered her, “if you want him that much, my dear, then _take_ him.”

Clearly he thought she could, and not just in the sense that when she looked in Potter’s direction and licked her bottom lip, he went red as anything, even if it was obvious she weren’t _really_ looking at him. It shamed her to imagine the sort of scene she did, sometimes, at night: Evan and her, smashed together in a closet, going at it, really going, and then James stumbling on them. Watching long and hard until they finished, until Evan left, and then…

“You _slut_ ,” he’d say, his voice thick with betrayal and arousal both, and anyway no matter what he called her he’d press her up against the wall and go at her too, not stopping even if she begged.

She started to look right at him as she licked her lips. Nervously, briefly, and then away. It tortured him very nicely, and her as well, because she knew, just knew that as liberal a pureblood as Potter was, he’d care– so very fucking much– that she wasn’t his pure Gryffindor virgin, his to unwrap, his to touch for the first time, his to spoil.

She never spoke of this to Evan. There was clearly no point, no proper beginning or end to their haphazard relationship. He didn’t ask her what side she was on, whether she’d keep her head down after school and perhaps leave the country, or whether she’d stay and fight (it was the latter). She didn’t ask him if he was marked.

Revise that: she didn’t need to. The mark had been there after Christmas, dark and ugly and yet very smooth, on his arm. She had expected it to burn her when she touched it; he had just as clearly expected it not to. Had stood still and let her do it, his hands nowhere on her, not grasping and taking the way they usually did. Letting her make the choice.

“You’re mad,” she’d muttered, after a moment.

“Yes,” he’d said, unsmiling. And then, added, after a breath. “No. Yes and no. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t mean he was sorry for taking the mark. That was clear, somehow, from the way he looked at her, from the way he still stood there, bared to her. He said, with his tone, with his body, with the creased, almost annoyed look on his face, that he thought it had been necessary to have that done to him, that it was somehow necessary to her too.

She’d hit him. Cried. Screamed. “You could have run!” she’d wanted to say, but the words ended in his mouth, pressed on hers, and anyway by that point she knew, in a way, that he was staying because she was staying too. He fucked her so hard that she was sore all through the next day, sitting gingerly and cursing him and wriggling a bit to feel it again.

That was the same day she kissed James. Not… intentionally? But they were alone, momentarily, in the library, her getting a book and him fidgeting at his table. And then he’d come up to help her lever an aggressive tome back onto the shelf, and he had lost his head as he looked down in her eyes, and leant in to kiss her. And she had allowed it to happen.

She’d known, by then, that that was a choice too.

As were the choices she made afterwards. Slapping James, pushing him away from her, letting him hold her back by her hand, briefly, to apologize. Letting herself be seen blushing, confused, unsure.

She was thinking, the whole moment, “I can’t fight anyone alone.” And so she had raised the idea to Evan, weeks later, only to be given his bittersweet, laughing, teasing blessing.

Which she hated him for, a little, and loved him for, a lot.

She could admit that, too, by then, even if she didn’t like it.

* * *

March came, and sundered them for good and proper. It was Severus that did it, Severus that disappeared one weekend and returned swaggering. Which left Lily shaking with rage and fear in her bed, and then in Evan’s warm embrace two hours later, when she got sick of trying to cry herself to sleep.

“This isn’t,” she began to say, eventually, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“All right,” Evan said, and she dug her fingernails into his arm and his neck and wanted, for a moment, to wrench his head from his body.

“You bastard,” she heard herself say, her voice high and wavering and strange. “Don’t you _dare_ say you’ll leave me, don’t you let me go like that, how _dare_ you?”

“My dear,” he said, in his most annoying drawl, “I believe _you_ are the one leaving _me_.” Then, after she shook him, he relented. “I am yours even if you walk away. Yours, understand? Your first, your accepted, your avowed lover until death comes between.”

He meant it. That was the most frightening thing about Evan, that he could grin and laugh and drive you mad with his jokes, and then turn around and say something like that, simply, flatly, believing it so hard with every fibre of his body that you couldn’t help but believe it too.

“Mine?” Lily found herself saying, wistfully.

“Yours, yes, yours.” His fingers trembled as they combed through her hair. She believed him.

God help her, she believed him.

* * *

She didn’t expect to fall for James too.

He could make her laugh, that was the problem. Like with Evan, she laughed despite herself, sometimes so hard that she almost pissed herself.

And then… when she gave in, when she told him she’d done things already, he looked, well, interested. Excited.

“Really?” he’d said, flushing a little. (James flushed a lot, always. Really quite a lot. For such a relentless, troublemaking, incorrigible liar, he was awfully transparent to her) “What do you mean, precisely? What have you done?” And he sounded, genuinely, as if he wished to know, so he could, perhaps, re-enact every one of the filthy things she’d done in just the way she liked.

She told him rather a lot, in rather a lot of detail, all while hearing his breathing get fast and eager, all while feeling the slow, aching rub of his cock against her hip.

“I shouldn’t,” James said, when she’d said her piece. “I shouldn’t press you like this. I didn’t want– I don’t want to feel, don’t want you to feel as if you must. Um. Give in.”

“But you’d like it if I did, would you?”

“Well, yes, Evans, I’d like it a lot, but that doesn’t mean…”

She stopped him talking with her mouth on his, and then her hands, lower down, when she realized he’d keep on trying to protect her from himself even with his mouth shut. It felt…

It felt as if she were the one in charge, the one driving things, the one forcing him. Which James liked, or seemed to like, rather a lot. He was louder than Evan, just much more incoherent, which was almost better; she didn’t want to hear anything definite, she didn’t want anything but his pleasure.

She took him. And it felt glorious.

Evan saw. He couldn’t not, because once James thought he was sure of her, he sat guard on her, around her, like he was a dog with one sole purpose in life. Lily found herself snapping at him for it, asking if he thought she was some precious stupid flower that couldn’t handle Quentin Travers’ creepy stare, or the way Liam Mulciber would smile widely at her, as if that’d ever make her forget what he’d tried with Winnie MacDonald.

And then James stared up at her, from his exaggerated, pathetic pose by her feet, and said: “I’m doing it because I know you’re not some precious flower. You’re…” And he flushed, and looked away. “You’re, you’re special, and I just think…”

“Not everyone thinks that,” she found herself saying, hastily, hating herself for liking it, for flushing stupidly, for aching at the thought that he might believe anything like that of her. “At least not the way you think.”

“I’ll stop,” James said. “Or, um,” he added, when she gave him a wry, disbelieving look, “I’ll be better?”

And he was.

Not enough better, of course, that there weren’t any more nasty jokes, leering pureblood smiles and people looking down their noses at both of them. “Well, I know what he must see in _her_.” “Bet you a sickle that he’s seeing it every night.” “Twice a night, if she knows what’s good for her.” “Myself, I wouldn’t bother if she wasn’t doing all the work, and I do mean all of it.”

James restrained himself, and only blacked Mulciber’s eye, and only because everyone knew about him and Winnie, Winnie who scuttled, now, from anything shaped vaguely like an older boy, and yet no one had done anything, for the two whole months in which the gossip had made the rounds. The Mulcibers were rich, but the Potters were rich too, and Liam had let himself be seen smirking at Lily and trying to get in her space.

Funnily enough, Liam Mulciber’s black eye turned into two black eyes, _and_ a rash of painful red stripes, _and_ a fever he ran for five straight days, though it had been the Slytherin prefects that had got him up to the Hospital Wing. James narrowed his eyes and looked slantwise at Severus, and was much more worried than thankful. All right, he wasn’t actually thankful at all.

Lily looked at no one at all, but she felt a burn of hot, guilty pleasure in her belly, and when that night she got on top of James and rode him fiercely, she thought of Evan at the last.

* * *

She tried not to think of Evan often. Mostly, she managed, far better than she managed with Severus, who had always seemed wounded to her, limping somewhere deep down, and vicious with it.

Where Severus might have carved his anger into Mulciber’s no longer handsome face with a shaking wand, Lily was well aware that Evan would have smiled, and been stone steady. Severus was who she worried about, when she saw him flocking with Them, as she had begun to call those marked– or probably marked– soon to be dangerous boys, in her head.

Evan… she worried not at all about what would be done to Evan. She only worried, sparingly, once every two weeks, about what he might be forced to do. About what he might do, freely, in the understanding that he had made a terrible choice, and must now make the best (as if there was any best) of it.

* * *

There were two more moments.

There was the time Evan came upon her in the library in seventh year in December, just as term was about to end, one of the few, rare times, these days, that she was there alone.

She tried to curse him, then, realizing who it was, tried desperately for a kiss instead. Both failed, because of him; he twisted her wand out of her hand with a sharp, painful jerk and forced her against a wall, his cock hard and terrifying against her arse, his arm braced at the back of her neck, forcing her mouth away from his.

“You’re not going home, are you,” he said, lowly, and his tone was somehow different. Rich, charged, and ugly, frightening if she didn’t know who was speaking. “Pity. I did so hope we might run into each other, at Christmas.”

“Why– I don’t–”

“Perhaps,” he said, ignoring her, “I might run into your sister, instead?”

“No,” Lily said, quietly, trying and failing to keep herself from crying. _Why would he ask?_ she thought. _Why did I ever tell him?_ “She’s not, um, she won’t be home. Friends, I think. She’s staying with them, I don’t know where–”

“Shut up, mudblood.”

He said it so very very carefully, that word she found herself remembering that she never really had heard him say, in all the years she’s known him. ‘The lower class’, yes. The hoi polloi, the chattel, the rest, our inferiors, our dear muggleborns, our Muggle-raised brethren, but never ever _ever_ ‘mudblood’.

 _This is it,_ Lily had thought. _This is the end._

“When I wish to know what you think, I will ask you. How have you, in all your years here, not managed to learn when the fuck to shut up?”

“Get away from me,” Lily said, quietly. “Or I will cut your throat.” There were hairdressing spells that people injured themselves with all the time, all wandless. Nothing out of the ordinary for even a girl like her to know. Those few simple spells had been shared, had been brushed up on, practised in volume, in general, by most of the girls, after Winnie MacDonald.

For their throats, or for yours.

Evan laughed, a rich chuckle she hated herself for wanting to hear again. For having missed. “Not going to tattle to Potter?”

She tried to claw at him with the spell, and he let her go in a hurry, laughing again. “Oh, Evans,” he said, grinning nastily at her. “It really is a shame you won’t be home to me.” The way he said that gave her a thrill and a chill both. “Until next time, then.”

She shook for a long time, after he sauntered away.

* * *

Midway through that Christmas break– she put her name on the list at the very last minute, not daring to name to herself just what she was afraid of– she got an owl about her parents.

Petunia was safe. But.

Her parents.

Lily screamed herself hoarse by the lake. When a curious, many eyed thing came scuttling out by the forest edge, to see what was making that awful noise, she went after it.

Killing it was madness. It was surprisingly, shockingly easy. It made her feel better, then worse, so much worse, as she looked at the remains and thought of other remains, her parents, their bodies opened, cut.

She didn’t have anything to bury. The whole house had gone up far too quickly, they had told her. She still knew– she knew, she guessed, she imagined, and then she was one with Them, in that moment, her body shaking with the urge to do the same, to hurt Them the same way she had been hurt.

Which was, of course, impossible.

So she wept more, silently, as she dressed the poor thing she had slain, harvesting the more useful looking bits and pieces, gathering the rest into a small, stinking heap she did not really smell until she was halfway back to the castle, and realized that she was stained all over.

Then it was: wash. Listen to the headmaster’s kind-eyed sympathy, not thinking of anything at all. Read Petunia’s frantic, inconsolable letter ( _you can have that vicious world. I want no part of it, not now, not ever_ ). Practice spells. Dream, unclearly, of what it would feel like to have a blade, or her magic, or a wand, on the beating pulse point in the smooth, brownish olive of the hollow of Evan Rosier’s neck.

By the time the next term came around, Lily felt drained.

There were more whispers. She wasn’t the only one showing up red-eyed or dead-eyed or a mixture of both.

Somehow, when she finally saw Evan, face to face, the urge to hurt him evaporated. She couldn’t help watching him with his already Marked friends and seeing the little lines of stress active on his face, even when he smiled.

 _Playing the game, is he?_ She thought bitterly. _And of course he wants me to believe he’s doing it all for me._

She couldn’t rule it out, despite everything. She had fucked Evan Rosier for a little more than five months, back in sixth year. You knew, after that much time, whether someone was playing you false. Surely you _knew_. Surely you suspected, if nothing else.

And yet, she hadn’t known it was in him to shove her around quite like he had, that frightening day in the library. Or that he could find it in himself to be so deliberately nasty to get his warning across, and have it followed dutifully.

She hadn’t known. She should’ve known, so this was, by extension, all her fault.

* * *

The second moment:

Two weeks after the hollow, joyless second term of Lily’s final year at Hogwarts began, she found a note in her Ancient Runes textbook, which was the only class she could think where they– she and Evan, she needed to stop fucking thinking they were a ‘they’– sat relatively close by.

The note said, simply: “MARRY HIM.”

Which Lily did, after burning the note and mentally consigning the author to the deepest pits of hell. How _dare_ he, when the ashes of her old family house still smouldered, pregnant with a fire that would burn, people whispered, as long as the Dark Lord lived. How dare he, how dare he, how dare he.

She cried. She wiped her tears away. And then she went to James Potter, and asked him, half bluntly, half tearfully, what they were going to do, what she was going to do for summer. “Standing invitation,” he’d said, immediately. “You can come to mine.”

 _He_ will _marry me,_ she thought, in that moment, as she sobbed into his shoulder. That was the worst of it, the very worst.

* * *

## after hogwarts

After she left Hogwarts, Lily expected, somehow, to be punished. And maybe she was, a little, marrying right out of school, her period missing, frighteningly missing for the first two months following, just out of pure stress (though she didn’t know that until she’d been through it and seen it come back, and cried on the toilet, _so_ relieved).

But then it went so well. _So_ well. James was not Evan’s sweet, poisonous fire, but he was the one in her hearth, warmth itself, his body warm and yielding beneath hers, his eyes alight for her, his hands there to hold her, to fetch the roast from the oven, to help her hang the curtains.

She didn’t know that she loved him, those first two months. She was too angry with herself, too exhausted, too afraid. Then, in a raid, she saw him fall, and she felt– she felt–

“Lily,” she heard Sirius saying, soon after, “Lily, please just come away from that, all right? Come away from her now, there’s a dear.”

And then, when he had half dragged her away from that bitch’s smoking corpse, it was, “he’s all right, don’t you see? He’s alive, he’s okay, Prongs is fine.”

And then, “ _was_ that an _Incendio_?”

“Looked like,” James said, “a really cracking _Flammare_.” He coughed– no blood, no blood, thank god. “She was having trouble with it, too. Weren’t you, love?”

Lily couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. She functioned, somehow, for the next few hours. She wasn’t sure she liked the sidewise looks she got, at the Order meeting, the we’ll-call-it-a-victory-because-we-all-got-out meeting, afterwards, but she reasoned, privately, that it was all right. That perhaps they would whisper into several series of ears, about the vicious mudblood bitch Potter had married, about how she’d burned a woman from the inside out, burned her in the fires of her own inner magic, just for winding her precious husband a bit.

Perhaps, that way, no one would try to take him from her. No one besides the obvious.

* * *

That night, she didn’t cry in James’ arms. She spoke instead.

“I married you to be safe,” she said. “To be fighting, but safe.” She put her hand over his heart, smoothed it over his slightly hairy chest. “If you die…”

“I won’t.”

It was stupid to say it. They knew it, he knew it, and yet he said it, cockily, his mouth turning up just the way she liked, the way that made her treacherously fickle heart beat just a little faster. And repeated it, as he came in for a kiss, his breath warm against her mouth. “I won’t die.”

They tried to fuck, and ended up crying helplessly in each other’s arms. “Do you want to leave?” James said, his voice hoarse and tired in her ear. “We could.”

She didn’t consider it for very long. She considered, instead, why it had never occurred to her to run. Why the thought of her parents, cut up, burning, burning, ever burning, hadn’t been enough to put the fear of You-Know-Who into her.

It wasn’t Evan. It wasn’t Severus. Or James, or his mad friends, or any of hers, the few that had stayed, the few she still furtively kept in touch with, through owl boxes in a shaded, quiet village in the Sussex countryside. It was Lily, just Lily, to blame.

“I won’t leave,” she said, to the husband she had married, to the husband she now knew she feared to lose. It was love, a fearful, desperate love, for him, for the fact that she could have him, someone tall and well-groomed and really quite posh, and rich, and kind, and giving.

She had him, and she would keep him, though Evan might smile and shake his head, sighing over her bad taste; though Severus had told her, in a low, flat tone, that Potter would only bring trouble to her, but he saw she was bound and determined on inviting it, instead of being sensible. It meant, or would mean, a lot less, if she tried to steal him away, to somewhere safer.

That she was here, beloved, in his arms, in the midst of a small, viciously determined corner of the world that thought she was only useful as– as someone’s mute, accommodating whore– _that_ was what she wanted.

But that was only her, only her opinion. And it occurred to her, at that moment, that she had never asked his. “James, if you want to leave…”

He kissed her mouth, then kissed her drying tears away. “I don’t. It’s mad of me, I know, but I don’t.”

* * *

He was away more often, after that. If Lily had been any less busy, she might have resented it, and she still did, sometimes, for brief, bitter moments, on the few nights she lay in bed, awake and alone. Sex became something snatched, something hurried and over, blissfully, wistfully over, before you could really feel anything.

She resented that too. Not that she turned it down, the chance to feel his body, the body of the man she loved, straining with hers, together. They talked afterwards, once in a while. Sometimes they just kissed. Her periods came in fits and starts, worrying her more than him, because James said, in that particularly cocky way of his, that if it was good enough for them to stay anchored to the madhouse that Britain had become, then surely it’d be good enough for little Harry, or Harriet, or Selina, or Jane, or Harrison, or Fleamont (“–no,” Lily had said. “Just… no.”) Potter, whenever they should choose to come along.

Privately, Lily disagreed. She still wasn’t sure, really, if she wanted a kid to handle, on top of raids, and readiness, and defence, and warding, and spell practice, and noodling out information from reluctant people, and every other fucking thing, but at the same time… Wouldn’t _that_ be something in the eye of all those sagely nodding gossips that said it was obvious he’d only married her for one thing, that if she were serious, if she were right-minded, she’d be increasing by now.

James, on a whim, took them both to St Mungo’s to get tested, by way of a gloriously silly night or three spent half drunk and grinding against each other in a series of rowdy Muggle clubs. They’d done it in fairly every manageable position, inside and outside, beneath the stars, feverish, alive. There was a raid scheduled at the end of the week, one that might see them making some real, measurable progress, and they had nothing to do but love each other until then.

After the tests, James had come out looking pale. Had had to be at home, and in their kitchen, before he would say, in a low, hurting voice, that things– the baby they were playfully fighting over naming in advance, that meant– things might not be easy to get.

“It’s not you,” he said. “They kept– all those fucking questions, for you, about being irregular, about– and it was me. It is. It is definitely me.” He was breathing a little hard, by then. “So things, might, well, they mightn’t happen.”

He shook, in her arms. Cursed, inaudible. “Fucking pureblood inbreeding,” he muttered. “Even my, my oh-so- _liberal_ family were at it. Keep the lines, be sure of them, and, and it’s me. Of course it’s fucking well me.”

“James,” Lily said, sick with his misery, and held him. And then ventured, later: “we could adopt?”

He shook again, vibrated in her arms, and for a long, awful moment, she thought she maybe shouldn’t have said it. Then she heard his telltale, wheezing gasps, and realized he was trying not to laugh himself sick, and could have hit him. “ _James._ ”

“Do you know how much I love you?” He wheezed. “So– so fucking practical. It’s, it’s not, ‘is there a ritual’, no, of course not, it’s a reminder that there are children to spare, in the world, if you’ll think about it for a moment, Mr. Potter, you great bloody numpty.”

“ _Is_ there a ritual?”

He smiled at her, gingerly. “Several.” Then lifted his chin at her, and shook his head. “The results are often… twisted.”

But the way he said “often” said “nearly bloody always” to her, and she felt her eyes go wide at that, at the implication, the thought that twisting your own children in some way was better than having them born of dirty blood, to some.

“Not us,” she said, fiercely. “Never.”

He smiled at her, fully, this time. “I really, really do love you.”

She rolled her eyes, half flattered, half uncomfortable. “So. Adoption.”

“Few people give their children up, if they’re magical,” he said, carefully. “Very few.”

“Sooo,” Lily said, “we adopt a muggle. Or five, I think five is really a good number, don’t you?” She has been trying for laughter, but when he didn’t, she felt suddenly, achingly glad. “I don’t know if I’d bring them into this, to be honest,” she added, unable, then, to look at him. “I barely know if, if we were fine to being anyone into this, if it was a good idea at all. Babies, you know, generally being unable to hold their own wands.”

Somehow, she’d expected that to at least make him smile, and then frown at her, exaggeratedly. Not this, not crumpling in on himself, face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. “James, for god’s sake, I wasn’t–”

“I pushed you,” he said, hoarsely. “I know– don’t tell me I didn’t. I’m sorry, I just thought, I figured, if, when we had someone together, someone just our own, it’d feel more real. More…”

“James,” Lily said, aghast. But before she could say more, before she could insist, could argue her case, or apologize, he covered her hand with his and squeezed it, gently, so gently.

“I know you love me,” he said, shakily. “But I don’t always– it’s hard, for me, sometimes, to really believe it. Not you,” he said, sharply. “Not your fault. You’ve been honest, mostly, more honest than I deserve. I’ve pushed you, wanted you, from the beginning, and when you started looking at me…”

Lily flushed, turning her hand over so she could squeeze his hand back, to claim a brief moment in the conversation. “It’s not all in your head,” she rushed to say. “I– I flirted, and I wasn’t– at the time, I wasn’t entirely–”

His eyelids lowered, and he _grinned_ , and she felt hot all over, squirming a little despite the situation, the seriousness of it. “You know very well, Mrs. Potter,” he drawled, “that your flighty, or should I say, _filthy_ ways, have only ever more inflamed me.”

“Oh, stop,” Lily said, weakly, because she wanted to hear it. To see it in his eyes, as he lowered his mouth to her hand, and kept it just above her skin, hovering, warm, enticing. “James…

“You were,” he said, softly, “and are, a dream I never thought I could win. All of you. Everything you are.”

“James, stop,” she said, meaning it this time. “I’ll– I’ll _cry_ , you beast.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, smiling, “know now, on this day, that if I may not– if I am not blessed to receive from you the child borne of your body–”

“This is another one of those pureblood things,” she couldn’t help but mutter, blinking hard. “You bloody shameless wanker.”

“– then I will be pleased to receive, instead, the child chosen of your hand.” His voice rang out dramatically, filling the echoing kitchen in a way that was more due to magic than enthusiastic, irrepressibly dramatic effort. “Perhaps,” he added, in a more normal voice, “not quite so soon upon the eve of war, I think.”

“James,” she said, sternly, and then wiped her eyes. And blew her nose, a little resentfully– _he_ never got a runny nose from crying. She’d thought, all those years, that those perfect teacher-taming tears of his were fake as anything, but they were truly, disgustingly real. “I’ll have to think.”

“Yes, of course.”

“We can’t adopt from just anywhere,” she added. “And there’s such paperwork, you’ve no idea, mounds of it, we’d have to be in some sort of system, on their end, I should think.”

Funny, she thought, how it had become “their end” so quickly. “It’ll be hard,” she added. “If they’re, if they’re not…”

“Yes.”

“We won’t send them to Hogwarts, I think. Regardless.”

A long pause, then, as her heart beat, wildly. As she wondered how to explain it to him, how to say–

“Yes.” When she looked up at him, startled, he had bowed in a little, over her hand, his face thoughtful and still. “Remus… you know how Remus had it.” A pause, in which she nearly didn’t breathe. “No one knew the whole truth– no one that, well, no one who could actually force him out. He was careful, he tried to be so careful all the time, and there was still… We betrayed him. We. His friends.”

 _Not you,_ Lily couldn’t help but think, mutinous. But she knew it wasn’t really true. He’d told her, in exhaustive, enraging, upsetting detail, what had happened, just after they’d started fucking. Then, when she’d raged at him, demanding to know what he’d been thinking, how he could have done that to Severus, to _Remus_ , he had given her a long, terrified look and said that he didn’t know. That all he’d been able to think about, months afterwards, when he wasn’t downing butterbeers and chasing skirt to drown it out, was that he’d have been a murderer, become a murderer, and he wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone why, save for the idea that it had, for one ugly moment, felt utterly right.

He didn’t say, then or now, anything about how he, they, Remus’ friends, should have been expelled. He hadn’t said anything, either, about what Mulciber had done, or tried to do, to Winnie MacDonald, but when the news had come back that Mulciber had been given a talking-to– _just_ that, as if he’d ever listened to one long enough to repeat some of it back to the speaker– James had given Lily a flatly tired look that said he wasn’t surprised.

“Beauxbatons,” he said, now, “maybe. They have a finishing school attached, and it doesn’t test, doesn’t ask anything. And you said, don’t you remember that time you went off at me in third year, about how Muggles had more schools in the world than we ever had or ever would?”

He was grinning a bit by then, so it was easy to groan and cover her face with her palm all while they held hands like they were drowning.

Lily went to bed slowly that night, marvelling how the tight, worried knot she’d feared to even look at in her mind had opened up so far with just this one, painfully sharp twist.

She hadn’t said no to the idea yet, the way she’d started to dream of screaming, shrieking at the top of her lungs, just so she could be sure it was all broken forever, and there was no way she could hurt him more. Now, though, as she thought of adopting, of the logistics, she found herself considering it. Wondering why it was so much easier to consider it.

She fell asleep thinking confusedly of how, if her babies, her children, were not magic, no one would want to take them from her. No one would covet them, as they seemed to covet everything else.

* * *


	2. the fevered dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can't handle **graphic, sexualized rape** , this chapter is 1000% not your jam. Additional warning for brief descriptions of gory, violent happenings. Also, there is a slight cliffhanger at the end. Wait a week for chapter 3 if you know it'll bother you ;)
> 
> Lastly, for those knowledgeable about the UK and perhaps cringing/wincing at any mistakes I made wrt choosing locations for things, I am *so* sorry. Let me know about anything truly egregious and I will do my best to fix it.

## the fevered dream

It came apart, that bright, sweet dream of hers and James’, in slow, grinding stages. The big, pivotal, supremely important raid failed. Her period went away for a whole month, leaving her half-hoping, half-afraid, jittery with the urge to tell James, and then utterly crushed, when it came again.

“I don’t even want it,” Lily sobbed, to herself. “I don’t even fucking want it.”

She went on, somehow. She killed again, often with the same flames, partly for James, but mostly for herself, for her steadily growing rage. She somehow managed to acquire passports for the both of them. She noticed James’ resignation when she showed them to him, and noticed, too, how he didn’t ask what mission they were for. They were in case, just in case. Everything was just in case.

* * *

One night, she Apparated, in fits and starts, muddying her signature as she headed steadily for Banbury, or, more correctly, for the village two miles south of it. She never found out, even afterwards, whether it was the owl box that had been betrayed, or the pattern of hops, or if it was sheer damned cussed luck.

She was spotted, of course, at the safest leg of the hop. Winslow, by the fire station, in the shadows– Lily was well through the long walk down the empty, shadowed high street, ambling on without much of a care, and then she saw Evan Rosier leaning against a dark, shuttered shop on the corner, as if he’d just been in, as if he’d walked out for a pack of cigs a quarter hour ago, and lingered.

He smiled when he saw her.

She ran, and ran, and ran, feeling the sticky fuzz of anti-Apparition wards and anti-Portkey wards on her skin, and then, when she was caught, feeling greedy, grasping hands, too. They were all men, of course, this particular lot.

_Just my rotten fucking luck,_ Lily thought, and fought. She got one who had come too close, who had thought that her broken wand must mean she would be shivering in her muddy boots: “ _Flammare Interno_!”

She’d never done it wandless before, without it fizzling out. It felt sweet, feeling him catch, combust, and cry out, screaming, begging as his vocal chords charred through.

“You bitch,” the tallest one said, in a grating, rageful voice that was almost, _almost_ familiar. “Put it out. Put him out, right now, you _fucking_ mudblood bitch!”

His hands, around her neck– almost. _Bad way to go,_ she thought, wheezing, struggling, _but fast, at least. Clean._

It wasn’t to be. “ _Bombarda,_ ” Rosier said, from somewhere nearby, mildly, and the grasping, murdering hands around her neck were torn away. “Really, Simmons. Surely you remember that the Inner Flame can only be countered by the victim.” His voice came close, and his hand curled tightly into her hair, dragging her about until a terrible light danced before her half-shut eyes. “Though, I suppose, when one can cast it that strongly…”

The man was silent, now. Lily hadn’t noticed his screams dying down, ceasing. Only the roar of the flames, now, a flame that called to her, that sang sweetly, to her magic, ‘I burn, you burn, we burn…’

“Oh,” she thought, or said, and tried to cast it on herself, only to feel Evan– no, just Rosier, he was _not_ her Evan any longer– dig his fingertips into her wrists, cruelly, twisting. “No,” she thought, or screamed. “No, no, no…” But her focus, and the dribs and drabs of magic she had not spent on that one useless death, all flew away, out of her hands, like it had never existed, like she had been trying to hold on to air.

She was still screaming when they stripped her. Not for the help that she knew wasn’t coming. Not for the police, who she hoped were still alive somewhere, were still alive and would not hear her or be called in time to come, because if they did, they would simply die.

She screamed for the sake of her contact, who, since they hadn’t been able to check in with her at the owl box, might have Apparated up here, instead. She screamed, as her captors pressed close against her with their hard, filthy bodies– scum of the fucking depths of hell, enjoying this, enjoying her pain– holding her down so Evan could activate the Portkey that would take them all away.

“ _Stupefy,_ ” he said, before he did it. And she knew nothing else, for a time.

* * *

There was someone on top of her. Someone– not James, definitely not James, too heavy, and they were working their hardened, slippery cock between her thighs and groaning fit to wake the dead.

_They’ll kill me,_ Lily thought, shivering despite herself, realizing, suddenly, that the low, thick laughter of the man above her wasn’t the only– he couldn’t be the only one here. She heard the sound of boots shifting against stone, impatiently. The sounds of cloth unfurling, being unbuttoned, or being moved aside.

More of them, and they were going to– there wasn’t any point in fighting, in screaming that they would kill her first, before they touched her. They already had touched her. She was lying on a mattress on the floor, and she could smell– feel– And they might kill her, or might not. Before or after. With her hands bound tightly above her head, attached, perhaps? To a hook in the wall behind her, the one wall she couldn’t clearly see?

Helpless.

She refused to react, then, beyond that shiver, even as the man finished with a low, long groan, his seed warm between her thighs. She yearned to say something stupid and brave about his performance. She didn’t.

She tried not to think about how long this would last, as the next man got in front of her, kicking her legs wide, pressing his boot– there. Not hard, not painfully, not yet. Her breaths came faster. She suddenly realized that they were talking, arguing.

“He won’t _know_ ,” someone with a plummy, vaguely European accent was insisting. “Not unless one of you informs on me. And, well, even if he does find out, look at her.” The man with his boot against her–it seemed to be him speaking, the timing of the gesture was just too perfect–stroked his boot up and down between her thighs, then rubbed it directly against her. “The potion has worked splendidly, and isn’t she _such_ a specimen? Could we, any of us, be blamed for, ah, indulging ourselves, a little ahead of time…?”

_Potion,_ Lily thought, and thought, hard, as they argued. Probably it was some version of Hecate’s Heat– she couldn’t taste anything but her own blood, and most other lust potions were imbibed, not applied topically. And they would have enjoyed the sight she’d made, spread and helpless, her cunt open to their stupid, unoriginal jests about carpets matching drapes. To their fingers.

It surprised her that she wasn’t going mad. That she wasn’t flinching from the laughter, the boot between her legs– replaced, now, by a solid, elegantly clothed knee.

_Well, bugger me,_ she thought, a little hysterically. _At least it likely won’t hurt much. Although that’ll only last as long as they forget they have the option of buggering me._ She could not bear to think about large objects, about– about what that might do to her, might feel like, so she did not. She made herself think, instead, shivering only a little, that probably, this particular man was only this gung-ho to be at it because he was compensating for the smallish size of his cock.

He entered. Breathed wetly, groaning theatrically above her. And then suddenly convulsed, his cock twitching inside her, even as he screamed fit to burst her eardrums.

Lily had a hard time not screaming along as well– this was, this had to be a _Crucio_ , and she’d missed it being cast, she missed it, and she would be next, it would be her, next–

“ _Bombarda,_ ” Rosier said, less mildly, this time, and she heard the man that had just been raping her smack into the empty shelving along the wall to her left, hard. Possibly too hard. “I thought I told you all to wait.”

No one said anything. The man by the shelves whimpered, then fell silent, perhaps out of self-preservation, or perhaps because he’d just expired. Lily didn’t know why it made her shiver to think of his dying so quickly, when he had just been at her. She had killed, too, hadn’t she? But never this quickly, this fucking casually.

Her first time had been driven by rage and certain loss– the creature in the forest. The next by the rage born of possible loss. The next, just rage. And then her rage had cooled, had hardened, and she had killed from angry, seething calculation, and done her best to pretend to be sorry every time her kill count went up.

Evan, on the other hand, was exactly the sort of person that would never bother to pretend at all. The way the silence sat about him, heavy and cringing, spoke of his having a free, vicious hand, and, more than that, of utter certainty that he had the permission for each and every act of violence. He was Evan Rosier, a Rosier of Rosier Lodge, and the Dark Lord had courted him, as he had courted every precious son of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and every pureblood heir that owned or would inherit wealth enough that their family’s absence from that august list did not matter. Even James had received– and promptly burned– a letter.

James–

She couldn’t think of James. She tried to put him aside completely, beneath Evan Rosier’s dispassionate, mildly disapproving gaze, but it was surprisingly hard. She couldn’t help but wonder if Evan– if Rosier had really truly given her his blessing to pursue her own mad form of safety, or if he had just told her what she wanted to hear at the time.

She wondered if he would take James’ location, the little-known address of their carefully warded safehouse, from her mind, by assaulting it, or assaulting her body. If he would take James from her, before she died.

_I must die first,_ she thought, fighting to keep that deep, mad thought from her face. Fighting to hide her resolution. _I_ will _die first._ “Please,” she made herself whisper. “Evan.”

He went still, his eyes moving from their slow, expressionless survey of the semen on her thighs, back up to her bruised, aching face. “What’s that?” he asked, his voice expressionless now as well. “Something to say to me, mudblood?”

“Please,” Lily said, carefully, her voice whisper-quiet. “You know how it is. I’m– I’m a symbol. Attractive cannon fodder.” She hoped she sounded bitter. She thought she must, because the bitterness was there, had been there, lurking, from the moment she realized they weren’t putting her in the first wave because they thought she could really fight. “I don’t know anything. I’d tell you. I’m not that strong that I’d hide things, keep hiding them like that, so please…”

“Ssh,” he said, stepping in and bending down toward her. “Don’t tax yourself, my dear.” His tone was low and soothing, almost as if they were back at school, back during their months of shared madness, back alone in one of their usual spots. “You’ve a long, long night ahead of you.”

Lily shook when he touched her breast, almost the way he’d used to do when he’d pretended to love her. Before, his touch had always felt proprietary, but in a pleasant, naughty, teasing way. This… this was ownership, absolute and utterly unchallenged.

“Anyone else,” he said, to the silent, watching circle of men off to her right, directly behind him, “still feeling the need for a little satisfaction?” His tone was teasing, now. Light. “I am, as I said, earlier, willing to share. Appropriately.”

One of them stepped forward, nodding carefully, his white mask bobbing in the dim light of the torches guttering somewhere on the walls. “By your leave, sir, if I may… May I have use of her mouth?”

“You may, Fordryn. Step up.”

_No,_ Lily thought, but did not say. It was the hand that was still on her breast, casually pinching her nipple. It was the sagging mattress beneath her. It was the unwelcome wetness she felt inside, the brief, sudden spasming of a body that yearned to be filled, that had been made to desire it. That would welcome rape if it meant that someone– that anyone–

She sobbed, unable to help herself, as the man that had asked for her knelt down on the mattress beside her, his thick, dripping cock already bobbing before her mouth. He had exposed himself hurriedly as he walked toward her. She had tried not to think of how she recognized the way he walked, tried to tell herself that it didn’t _matter_ if this was Fordryn Simmons, who’d always looked at her that hungrily, even when she was only a third year, only just having come into her tits.

“Open your mouth,” Evan told her, and she did.

“Suck him like you suck your blood traitor husband,” Evan said, his voice low and steady. Aroused. Even now, especially now, Lily could tell.

“Please,” she dared to say, only to have Evan put his other hand around her neck, squeezing firmly. That she had ever used to like that, that she had used to swoon in pleasure at the thought of his big, hard, hands… she wanted to die. But she wouldn’t, she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to die just yet, even as she choked, as spots swam before her eyes.

“I won’t ask nicely again,” Evan said, pleasantly, as he eased his grip on her. “Suck him. Suck him the way you’d suck me right now, for your freedom.”

The worst of it was not the taste– unobjectionable, just a little natural musk. _No worse than James on a bad day_ , Lily found herself thinking, and wanted to weep. It wasn’t the low, hungry moan Simmons made as she took him in, slurping carefully around him. It wasn’t the way the others pressed in around them, excited, commenting on her strengths: “didn’t think she’d take all of him, by Merlin,” “fuck, I think I’ll have that mouth too, for my turn,” and “now she really is the Head Girl, eh?”

She tried to hate whoever had said that last thing, tried to hold onto something that wasn’t her body aching, savouring the taste, the moans, the low, filthy grunts of Simmons as he fucked her mouth. She couldn’t seem to think of anything but the cock in her mouth, and that was, and went on being, the worst of it.

When Simmons came, she couldn’t hold back a moan as she swallowed around him. _Bet they doubled up,_ she made herself think. _Bet it’s more than just Hecate’s Heat, driving you like this._ But it didn’t make it easier to hear Simmons’ satisfied groans, hear the laughs, hear the breathless proclamations that of course she liked it, she _was_ a mudblood after all, their pretty little whore.

_I am not yours,_ she told them, silently. _I will never be yours._ But when Evan stroked her shoulder, she moaned again, helplessly, pressing into his touch, and said, “please.”

“When you have satisfied them,” he said, coolly, “and not before.” And then he was pulling away from her, her anchor floating off out of her reach, leaving her to the hot, hard hands and panting, eager breaths of his fellows. “ _Don’t_ make any healing potions necessary– I’ve none I care to waste on her, and the Dark Lord will prefer her to appear before him whole.”

“Yes, sir,” Simmons said, crisply. “Anything else, sir?”

“You may finger her cunt, and lick it, if you can stomach the idea. You can even lick her arse– and yes, I know at least one of you has thought of it, you filthy slummer, you.” They laughed, for his merry tone invited them to, while Lily lay there empty, yearning to be filled with anything other than unreasoning, helpless hate. “But none of you will fuck her arse, or her cunt, or I will flay you alive.”

He sounded merry still, at the end of that little speech, but none of them laughed. Lily shuddered, thinking of it, thinking of the same hands that had touched her doing that. Pulling someone else apart. There were two established ways, two roughly dissimilar methods she had read about, once, in a book she should not have been reading. You could employ only one of those methods at a sufficient distance that the blood of the victim would not soil your robes.

It was clear, somehow, from the way all Evan’s fellow Death Eaters nodded to him, that he was the sort of person to think nothing of wielding a knife and some whispered spells close in, as was traditional. That he had done it before, and done it gladly.

Lily did not watch him leave. There was room to do so, between the figures of the close, clustering, half-bared men around her, but she did not try for it.

She sucked, mostly. Simmons, impatient for his second turn, urged her onto her knees and got behind her. Then, as her heart raced, as she tried desperately not to think of how bad things might get if he too decided to flaunt Rosier’s rules, she felt him dip his fingers inside her clenching, empty cunt, slowly enough that she couldn’t keep back a whimper.

“Prime,” he murmured, as he withdrew his fingers, and the man in her mouth chuckled. Lily shut her eyes then, ready for the worst, only for Simmons to come back and press his spit-slick cock between her tightly closed thighs. “ _Oh_ , that isn’t half bad. Ah…”

He seemed, by some unspoken agreement, to be the only one allowed to have her that way, allowed to work his body close against hers, allowed to squeeze her breasts and bite the back of her neck. The others seemed content to have her mouth, to use it, to fill it again and again. “The rites of spring,” one of them said, breathless. “The rights corrupted, redeemed…”

“Ye-es,” Simmons drawled. “This is almost it, exactly.”

She’d no idea what they were talking about. She could barely think. She had only managed not to beg to be properly fucked because her mouth had been too busy, her mouth and her throat and her thighs. And whenever one of them withdrew, she found her resolution again, her resolution to beg nothing of any of this worthless scum.

Rosier was another story. Rosier was the one who would kill her; Rosier was the one who had owned her, once, at least according to his twisted sense of things, and he would be the only one that might listen, anyway, if she begged for her life. That might think this was all punishment enough for how she’d got away from him.

“Oh,” another of them groaned. “Oh, fuck, her _tongue_.”

“Can see why Potter wouldn’t drop her,” another said, probably the man that had just pulled out after coating the back of her tongue with a weak spill of come. The Divine Argent they had all likely shared before waking her must be about to run its course. “Christ, I wish I could fuck her.”

“Wishing is all _you’ll_ do,” Simmons said, heavily, as he continued to work his cock between her thighs. “I’m all but certain– I really think he’ll give her to me after he’s done, just for a moment, just so I can wet my cock in her sweet little cunny…”

“He blasted you off of her, earlier,” the previous man said, disdainfully. “You’re more than dreaming, Simmons, you’re off with the fairies, drinking dust.”

“Oh, fuck off, you just wish he’d give her to you too,” was Simmons’ good-natured retort, at which they all sniggered. They none of them mentioned their fallen, shallowly breathing, barely living comrade, who was still crumpled at the foot of the shelves somewhere off to her left. They all lined up for one last go at her.

“Here, then, you filthy slut,” Simmons said, twisting his fingers inside her. “Here you fucking go…”

Lily tried not to make her orgasm obvious. They all hooted anyway, crowing as she came, as if it meant anything, as if a fucking doorknob couldn’t have made her come at this point, if she rubbed up against it just right. She hated, hated, _hated_ the way tears filled her eyes, making them laugh harder, crow longer.

She expected something to happen, then, something appropriately dramatic. For Evan to come storming back, wreathed in flame, her sudden, unlikely saviour, killing indiscriminately and then bearing her off. He would hide her away in Rosier Lodge, blanket ward that draughty old place that she had never seen, but had heard much of (all derogatory), and he would fuck her in his own bed, again and again.

Instead, she drifted. She begged, now and then, for Evan, that he would please, please, please come for her.

“Fucked if I know what he’s done to you,” Simmons whispered throatily in her ear. He had– he wasn’t fucking her, he was thankfully still too afraid, for that, but once the others had tired of her, and Evan had still not returned, he had moved her into a slightly less cell-like cell, one with an actual bed frame beneath its stinking mattress. He’d re-dosed himself with Argent, then fucked her thighs, again and again and again. “Can’t believe you’re still calling for him, still whining.”

He spoke as if he were complaining, but his sped-up breaths and thick, swollen cock said the opposite. He’d probably very much enjoy it if she whined for him.

Just like that, Lily woke up again, inside. “I…” She was glad that she’d been screaming enough that she was limited to a small, hoarse, whisper. “I don’t know what he’s done. I don’t know what he wants, I don’t know anything–”

“Come off it, Evans,” Simmons said, cutting her off with a low, rough chuckle. “You’re no green girl; surely even a stupid mudblood like you can see it when a man wants you.” He slowed his movements, clearly savouring each thrust. “He fought for the right to lead that patrol regularly. Dunno how he knew he’d end up coming across you in that area, but it’s safe to say,” and his breathing got faster, “safe, to say he had an inkling.”

“Please,” Lily said, and he assumed, of course, that she wanted him to fuck her, that she was asking for that instead of trying to get the breath to ask him about Evan. “No–”

“Oh, yes,” Simmons said, his voice harsh with triumph. “You don’t beg off once you offer it up, Evans. You’ll take my cock inside you. You’ll fucking take it.”

She had no more breath to struggle. The potion, perhaps, and his hand, over her mouth, stifling her helpless scream as he jerked her thighs apart. She tried, then, to lie still, to keep from rising toward him, rising to welcome his intrusion, but it was so difficult. She could hear herself moaning, could hear him too, as he–

“Fuck,” he breathed. “That’s so fucking tight.” And then: “sweet Merlin, I want to fill your belly. Potter hasn’t managed, has he?” She tried to pull away, turn away, only to be held down in place as he slammed his cock in to the hilt, again and again, his balls smacking her arse. “I don’t think you’re pregnant, Evans. I’d bet these,” and he squeezed his hand hard around her breasts, moving from one to the other, fondling, pinching and pulling her nipples, “I’d lay a galleon these would be bigger, if you were _enceinte_. D’you know what that means, mudblood?”

_I’ll kill you,_ she thought, trying to hope it might be possible. She didn’t say the words; she didn’t dare.

“Don’t you worry,” Simmons said. “You’ll soon– you’ll find out soon enough.” And, instead of coming in her, he jerked out at the last moment, the suddenness of the motion hurting her. He came on her stomach in a rich warm spill she ached to have inside her, ached to be allowed to try and lick up.

He sat on her legs, refusing to allow her any movement. He spread his semen up onto her breasts, then sucked it off, stroking himself again, making small, satisfied noises as he slurped at her aching breasts. “Oh, that’s just– lovely little tits.” And then, into her ear, “If you want it again, Evans, you have to ask.”

“Or what,” Lily said, sick of the useless game she’d tried to play, sick of the sound of him, “you’re saying you _won’t_ fuck me, if I tell you I’d much rather boil you alive?”

He slapped her. “Mouthy little slut.” He leaned in and jerked her legs apart again and began to enter her, breaths coming heavy and fast, and then stopped, closing her thighs around his cock instead, when the door to her cell creaked open. “All you’re fucking good for–”

“Indulging yourself, Fordryn?” It was Evan, finally, some undefinable tension in his smooth, uncaring voice. “I do hope,” he added, as he stepped into the cell, his footsteps heavy and grinding against the stone floor, “I really do hope that you’ve conducted yourself appropriately.”

“Yes,” Simmons said, in gasps, slowing down a bit. “Yes, sir, I believe I… ungh, I do believe I have… given…” He was going to come again, the fucking bastard. “…this slut… all she deserves in, ah, ah, fuck!”

“Yes, yes,” said Evan, who then cast something so foul that it had Lily struggling weakly to scramble away almost immediately, even though there was nowhere to go, even though Simmons, in his colossal stupidity, held her down hard, still spurting and grunting away. It spilled over her, the spell, in a slow, heated trickle of power that _picked_ at her, and had her holding in a scream.

When it faded, she realized that the weight, the awful sweaty weight of Simmons, was gone. Just gone.

She screamed. She felt… dust, settling on her skin, but the only way, the only method, the only source, it had to be Simmons, his dust, and she screamed again, because she’d been so afraid, the hours of these men going at her, and now one of them was gone, wiped away, and she was undoubtedly next.

Darkness fell.

There had been some weak, grey light in the cell, but that was now gone too, and Evan’s footsteps came marching up to her, one, two, three, she was dead, she hadn’t thought, she hadn’t really imagined he would–

“Ssh.” His voice, low and sweet, just by her ear. She had nothing left but terror then, when he touched her, and though she was weak, though she was almost certainly about to die, she reached down deep, and curled into his touch, and aimed the wordless whisper of the hairdressing charm at his neck.

He shielded it. The spell didn’t so much as blemish his skin, and yet he did not laugh, did not taunt her. “Ssh, Lily,” he said. “Ssh. _Stupefy._ ”

* * *

She woke up in Rosier’s arms. Naked, yet wrapped in a sheet. Stiff, her neck aching from the awkward position she was propped up in against him, half sitting, half lying down on top of him. He was half hard against her arse, his hands combing lazily through her hair, and it could all have been the start, or the middle, of a pleasantly dirty dream, if she hadn’t been able to remember what had come before. If she hadn’t been able to feel the ache between her thighs, the way her mouth and her jaw still felt tender, the way her throat felt sore as well.

She didn’t do anything but lie there, for the present. _No wand_ , she thought. _No wandless magic he can’t counter immediately, unless he’s thoroughly distracted._ Which Evan wouldn’t be, while he raped her, no matter how very much he might enjoy it; he’d always been extremely coherent, during. He’d always, always noticed what she was panting for, noticed what wasn’t working.

“Awake?” he asked, pleasantly, his hands stilling in her hair. “Eh, my dear?”

It would be the height of stupidity to say nothing. “Yeah,” Lily somehow managed to say. “I’m awake.” Tears filled her eyes– useless– and she blinked them away, slowly. “Can I… may I ask some questions?”

“Mm, yes,” he said, moving one hand down to stroke the side of her cheek. “Yes, of course.”

She didn’t know what would move him in her favour. She didn’t know if she had it in her to play the role he seemed to want, the role of a soft, pretty thing nearly naked in his arms, her bruised modesty preserved by only a sheet. She was sure– trying to be sure, trying to remind herself to be sure, that he was going to kill her no matter what.

“I don’t know anything,” she said, very carefully, “so why… why bother with me?”

“Do you want me to lie to you, Lily?”

Lily, instead of Evans, or Potter. She wanted it to mean something, wanted it so deeply that it shamed her, that it twisted something deep inside her chest.

She told herself that it meant nothing. That the name meant nothing coming from his lips. That he was only saying it to make her hope enough that the final betrayal hurt her further.

“I can tell you,” he murmured, softly, “the very best of lies.” He had used to talk to her like this. During, and after, as if they were the only two people in the world, the only ones that mattered. “I can make you,” and here, he shifted beneath her, making her aware again that only the thin, soft cotton of the sheet protected her from him, “open your legs to me, willingly, for what I want.”

There was something shameful, surely, about being afraid to be raped– again– by someone you knew– again. Fordryn Simmons, who was now gone to dust, had upset her, had disgusted her, had frightened her, but the thought of Rosier, of _him_ being the one…

She tried to think about things logically, bluntly. To tell herself that, realistically, Rosier’s assault of her would just be more of the same. He’d feel freer to hurt her, yes, freer to make her scream, but that was all she was in for, surely, and if that was all she needed to do to survive, if she could weather all that and some filthy insinuations about her former, idiotic association with him–

“You’ll likely walk off,” Rosier continued, in that same, soft tone, “hating my guts, but it’ll all be that much cleaner.”

She had been thinking, somewhere in the back of her mind, that playing his slave for a few weeks, just until she could put her hands on a wand or seize some other opportunity, was the best that she could hope for. And now…

‘Walk off’, he’d said. As if she were stupid enough to believe that now that he had her in his power, he might actually let her go, just like that.

She had been such an _idiot_ , to think– to ever imagine that she loved him. Probably, she really hadn’t. She certainly didn’t, now, as Rosier eased his grip on her, letting both his hands trail down the sides of her arms, lightly. Constraining her not at all.

“It’ll be much safer for you,” he said, his tone firm, now, cool and serious. “I recommend you choose the lies.”

Then he felt silent– to let her ‘choose’. To torture her further. To– to– to–

Lily shook, helpless to be still, helpless to even try to play his game, to play any role at all. “Please,” she gasped, hating herself for lying there, for not even trying to stumble away from him– as he was no doubt prepared for her to do, but at least it would have shown something, would have shown she’d take any opportunity. Would have shown she wouldn’t just die here, eventually, in his arms, on her back. “Please just fucking do it, Evan,” she said, tired and decided both. “Please just do it and kill me quick.”

“Lily–”

“Are you _still_ on that?” she snapped, reflexively, then flinched, because his hands had gone still and tight on her arms. When he didn’t do anything else, when he didn’t say anything, she found, somehow, the courage to go on. “I know,” she said, hyperventilating, her voice a weak, hoarse thread, “I know you’ll do it, so don’t tell me, don’t pretend…”

“Hey,” Evan said, sitting up, his arms encircling her once again, “look, hey, hey, stop. Stop. I’ll– no lies, all right? No more lies from me.”

Lily couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop thinking she had been a fool, ever thinking, ever daring to think she could get away with letting him, having him in her, when he was like this, a liar born, able even to sound upset after he’d– after he’d let those men, no, encouraged them to rape her, and then ordered her to take it. That he could sound so deeply, truly upset, like the death he would visit on her, the death she would _die_ was something she might make all right by not crying quite so much–

“Lily, please, _please_ , I’m a Seer.”

He sounded so desperate, so frightened to speak that he’d resorted to a harsh, low whisper, right against her ear. She bit her lip, then, choking in her cries, because anyone that sounded that afraid was no one to be provoked, no one to push.

“I–” he cut himself off. “Swear to me, on your life, that you will tell no one.”

For a moment, she could not speak. Then: “My life.” She hadn’t thought she had enough strength, enough sheer, burning courage to sound so angry, so angry that it made her weak, half-whispered words sound almost loud. “My _life_?”

“Lily–”

“Evan, you are going to fucking kill me!”

“Swear.”

That was the same tone he’d used on the other Death Eaters, the same flat command, so she, breathing hard, choking down her terrible anger, swore to secrecy, just as he wished.

He was the one to cut her thumb for her, the only one who had strength left to do it. The magic that governed the vow seemed not to care at all, digging its claws into her, settling on her shoulders like a heavy weight.

“Not that it’ll help,” Evan muttered, rubbing his thumb over hers, pressing down on the cut firmly. As if it were important to him that the petty hurt be healed. “Not if the Dark Lord decides to look at you.”

“The Dark Lord,” Lily said, sarcastically, because she was through with this, just utterly through, “whose boots you kiss.”

“On occasion,” was the absent response. “Yes.” Meaning he had done it.

“The Dark Lord,” she went on, because why fucking not, “whose actual shit you’d shovel, by hand, if he requested it.”

“Well…” Evan said, considering, actually considering, that was very definitely his considering voice, and she was starting to think she was in a very surreal sort of hell. “He doesn’t generally make demands _quite_ so much on the fringe. And certainly not without the proper context; you see, it is customary for the more privileged party to insist on some deliberate act of obeisance from their partner, when entering into certain kinds of formal relationship.”

A really quite bizarrely thoughtful silence ensued.

“The more liberal option,” Evan began again, abruptly, “is a kiss on the offered hand, gloved or not. The Dark Lord, well, as a halfblood, he could hardly afford that.”

The Dark Lord, a halfblood? _Lord Voldemort_ , a halfblood?

Probably, the thing to do was remain silent, for Lily to keep her stupid, sharp tongue from damning her any further, but of course she couldn’t. “He is not a– what on earth are you all doing, then, running about for him?”

“I do it,” Evan said, crisply, “so I don’t die.”

Another silence. Then, he added: “To be more clear, I do it so I die less horribly.”

Somehow, Lily knew that he must now be smiling. The grimly smug one, the one that said you knew, just as he knew, that it was a terrible thing to joke about, but he was Evan Rosier, and so it was his sworn, sacred duty to make such a joke, because otherwise, who would?

_Lord, but it’s obvious I’ve a type,_ she found herself thinking, dazedly. _They really are cut from the same mad mould, him and my husband–_

No. No thinking of James, just in case.

“As for the others, well, I don’t imagine that every one of them knows. The ones like me, that might suspect– I watch, you see, I must watch everyone. I always have, because otherwise I feel sick.” That last said by Evan as an aside, in a matter-of-fact tone that said he was long used to sickness, to weakness. And to preventing it at all costs. “Anyway, if any of them do notice how very studied he is, how _presented_ , and how he never ever relaxes the manner he’s supposed to be born to, well, even if they have noticed those things, they have also noticed, as anyone in his presence must, that he is power itself. Power given flesh.”

Which was, regrettably, quite true. There’d been times, two, perhaps three times, when she’d been there, been part of the block, or the warding team, been head down forcing a feverish _Episkey_ into someone she knew might be fading, and yet, even distracted, wired to the gills, her focus on her task absolute, Lily had always felt it whenever Voldemort had arrived.

The air seemed to pause within your lungs. A cheap trick, to be sure, a fairly rarely-used medical charm, but cast widely, effortlessly, moments after Apparating in, like you’d do a spell to shake the dust off your cloak. Only that spell was delivering the equivalent of a brick to the chest for everyone within about a mile of him.

Lily had wondered– never in the moment, never while there, because if you thought too hard, you went down– why, if Voldemort could steal the breath from a whole battlefield’s worth of wizards, he did not just turn it all to fire in their lungs, and then stand back, smiling, watching them all become the dust they essentially were, to him. Compared to him.

Dumbledore couldn’t always be there, you see. Not soon enough.

Then, the third time, or perhaps the second, the time Lily had been on block, her arms heavy, her wand hand cramping fiercely, she’d seen Voldemort, not too far away, smiling just a little as he tore into the battered shed Benjy Fenwick had been pinned down in. The luckless Death Eater doing the pinning had been nearly scalped by the first, bright spell, and avoided that only to duck into the way of the second; the shed itself had crumpled into nothing, leaking screams and orange light.

_Hold shields, hold shields,_ Gideon had screamed, as if it could help. The fact that it had, when the red-hot, glowing splinters of the shed had come at them, followed by a shower of fizzing blood (the Death Eater, having just expired), had only made her feel worse.

_We’re dust,_ she had thought, at that moment, remembering that small smile. _Dust he likes to play with._

“You’ve seen him,” Evan said, his low, speculative tone scattering her fear-tinged memory, “haven’t you? You know.” Then, when she refused to say anything, for all the good that would do, he went on, his tone returning to its normal volume. “So, Evans, though they, like I, may see him for what he is, they say nothing.”

Evans, again. _Not a good sign,_ Lily thought, and yet nothing came of it, for some few quiet moments. It was just him and her, lying together on a couch, in a small, drab, stiffly furnished living room she did not recognize at all.

“Evan,” she said, before the last of her courage deserted her, “where are we?”

“Bromley,” he said, immediately. “Small property of mine. If they’ve run a blood trace– Potter will, I believe, or perhaps Black– they will be finding you shortly.”

Lily had nothing to say to that. To that– to that sweet, stinging lie, to the implication that any property of the Rosiers would not be warded against even the mildest locator spell. Which was about the only rank of spell that James, wary of blood magic, had ever learned.

He’d shared those few, small spells with her, in private. She had no doubt that he’d use them for her, that after a few, shattering moments to take in the news, he’d have gone immediately to her volatile ingredients cupboard, and snatched up one of the carefully charmed vials within. _Just in case,_ they had both thought, but not said, while they each had filled and labelled one.

She had wished, back then, that she had been able to make more. For Sirius and the others, much as they might have frowned, or argued. For Jemima, who was in America now, not yet married, but thinking of it, and never letting through the least hint of her precise location in her cheerily written letters. For Petunia, though she’d never have stood for it. For Severus, because one of the spells James had given her did not use more than a very small drop, simply to tell you if the owner of the blood still lived.

Evan, on the other hand, had never made her morbid little list. She’d known, all along, that he wasn’t for her, not to have, and certainly not to worry about, except in secret, with no precious actions or plans spent on him. From the first, he had been lost to her.

Stupid of her, to even think of wishing that it could have been different. That perhaps, instead of stealing away her one, merry, rich, eligible, pureblood lover, binding him to her with wedding vows beneath the glittering night sky, she had chosen another, and stolen him instead.

Not that she was sure, in this moment, looking dully around the stiffly furnished room, whether the Rosiers even had enough that there’d still have been witches narrowing their eyes at her for sweeping a favoured son off the field. Even the Potters’ smallest house– a really quite narrow cottage in Salcombe– had been better done up than this.

“Merlin alone,” Evan said, shifting purposefully beneath her, “knows what you’re currently thinking. Ssh, no,” he said, before she could more than open her mouth, “do not tell me. It will be vastly more entertaining for me to speculate, in the hours to come.”

_Here it is,_ Lily thought, grimly, blinking away the traitorous tears that started up when he stripped her of the sheet she wore with one smooth movement. When he eased out from under her, and got on top, parting his robes, unbuttoning his trousers, freeing himself. He lay down, his full, heavy weight braced on top her, his hand fisted about his cock, his breathing growing unsteady.

“This,” he said, in her ear, “is, I’m afraid, quite necessary.” And then gasped a spell, the wash of which was terrifyingly familiar. She heard as much as felt the hand he had on his cock get slippery, with some slick, warming liquid they’d never quite agreed on the composition of, back when it had been a regular feature in their meetings.

_Magic,_ Evan had enjoyed insisting, against all Lily’s evidence, against even her surreptitious attempts at formulating something similar. _Pure magic, in my thoroughly considered opinion._ The way he’d used to say it, you almost didn’t need to see him smirk, afterwards, to know just how he had considered such a thing.

She hated him, now, for spoiling yet another memory. For breathing heavily above her, groaning low in his throat, familiar, so familiar, and any moment now, he’d– he’d do it, he’d enter her, and if she were unlucky, which she would be, of course, the potions they’d dosed her with, the potions he’d _let_ them dose her with, they’d make her feel–

“Lily,” Evan breathed, and shuddered against her, his warm come splashing onto her stomach. She froze, confused, and then remembered that the other Death Eaters had availed themselves of stamina potions, before. That Evan would have done so as well. That there was more to come. “Oh, Lily, my impossible love.”

_Do nothing,_ she told herself. _Feel nothing._ And so, when he pulled back, and reached down, with one slightly sticky hand, to cup her cheek, she lay there, thinking aggressively of nothing. When he leant back in, to press a kiss to her mouth, she let him, wondering, bitterly, if he’d prefer that she opened her mouth to him without any need for force, or if, as in the old days, he preferred to take what he wanted.

She felt the house seem to shudder around them, and didn’t flinch, thinking vaguely of adverse interactions, common in poorly combined lust potions. Hoping that perhaps she’d be lucky enough that this new reaction would kill her.

Then the wards split, and she froze again, recognizing that feeling too well not to react. She looked, stupidly, up at Evan– she had been avoiding meeting his gaze, before– only to see him smiling down at her. “Open your mouth,” he said, his voice low and wicked, and without quite meaning to, she did.

He kissed her then, properly. Desperately, as if, after everything, her mouth could taste of anything good.

Then he rolled off and away from her, adjusting himself with one hand, his wand out in the other, all while the house continued shaking. Lily couldn’t move for a long, strange, breathless moment, watching him. Hoping, despite herself, that everything he had confessed to her might turn out to have been the truth.

Footsteps. There was a door not too far from Evan, a placid, solidly traditional wooden door embedded in the wall he was facing.

Somehow, Lily managed to force herself to sit up, to feel around, shakily, for the sheet. _Why isn’t he facing the door?_ she thought. _The wall–_

The wall exploded, leaving the door intact. Leaving Evan intact, behind an expertly raised shield. “If it isn’t Potter,” he said, his tone languid, his shoulders tense. “How very typical, that you’d shun the old ways so very loudly, only to appear, bloody-handed, the moment you misplace your mudblood pet.”

Lily could feel more than see James’ anger as he cast. Evan countered, easily, holding the shattered gap in the wall, using the stone James had broken through against him. James dodged back, a tall, familiar blur through the sheen of Evan’s shields, and Lily hurried to wrap herself in the sheet, stumbling to her feet, her heart so tight with worry that she could not speak.

This wasn’t James at his most sensible. If Evan didn’t take care– could she even want him to survive her husband’s fury? Could she even…?

If she said nothing, she would regret it. Explain it to herself, forever, regretting it. “Evan,” she tried to say, wondering if she dared try to get closer to him, closer to the gap he was holding James at. “James, please–”

The wall beside her, the wall opposite the couch she and Evan had lain on, minutes ago, it trembled, first, before exploding in. Lily ducked, or tried to duck, but it didn’t help very much. She felt stone punch her in the side, the arm; she folded, holding her head, the sheet forgotten. It was too much, for a moment, too much pain to pay attention, so she drifted, and hoped it would all be over soon.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See y'all in a week ;)


	3. day breaks

## day breaks

Lily woke in her own bed, in her own nightgown, her head fuzzy and strange. James was there immediately, looming over her, his face tight and creased and blotchy, like he had been crying for hours on end. “Potions,” he told her, shortly, the way he did whenever she’d been the one to get hurt worse on a raid, as if the earth would stop turning if she didn’t take them.

“Mmh,” she said, by way of answer, finding that if she moved slowly, she could just about manage sitting up. She stretched out a hand, and he placed a vial in it, uncorked, his other hand warm around hers as he helped her grasp it. He let her knock it back, after her usual automatic pause to sniff at it. “Next one.”

She went through four more of them, tasting each one in a dim, distant way, as if her tongue and her brain were not quite comfortable together. Healing Potion, Feversbane, Ulgin’s Joint Repair– she’d probably been out long enough that the Skele-Gro had already been administered, that or none of her bones had been too badly broken or crushed to need it. Blood-Replenishing Potion. Pepper-up, because for some arcane reason, it hastened the effect of Healing Potion.

She sat there flushing as the steam whooshed out of her ears, feeling faintly ridiculous, her attention slowly refocusing on the empty tray that James had jammed onto her crowded bedside table. “Where’s the cordial?” she heard herself ask, almost breezily. “I know I didn’t have any brewed, but surely someone in the Order must have.”

“The Order,” James said, as if tasting the word in his mouth sat ill with him. “The Order doesn’t…” He swallowed, looking down and away from her, at the fists his hands had made on his knees, at the floor to the side of the dining room chair he had pulled close to her bedside. At the empty tray. “The Order did not assist.”

“But you must’ve asked,” Lily said, in a desperate rush, staring over at him. Still thinking about the missing Colleen’s Cordial, the one potion she really, really needed, after everything that had happened. “They can hardly all have _run out_ , everyone, nearly every witch makes…” James was still not looking at her. “James?”

“I,” he said, and then stopped. Just stopped. Then, visibly steeling himself, continued: “I checked you a few times, there and here, with the usual spells.” He breathed in, and out, and in and out again. “You aren’t pregnant.”

“Oh,” Lily said, hardly daring to believe it. “Oh.” And then: “I’d really still prefer…”

“Of course.”

“But the spells are never wrong,” she added, to herself. “They’ve never been wrong, for us, anyway.” Then she looked back over at James, and saw the way he was trembling, a little, and reached out to put a hand over one of his fists. “Treated yarrow root’s still extremely short, then?”

He snorted. “Yarrow root, bitterroot, boomslang skin, Milton’s milk, jasper. That’s the latest list.”

“You telling me hellebore syrup can be got again?” Lily knew she only sounded like a parody of brightness, but she also knew she had to try something, had to do something to put that awful bleakness off his face. “When can I start brewing? We’re always low on–”

“Lily, stop. Just stop.”

Silence.

“I have to do something,” she tried again, more seriously. “If I’m going to be slow for a bit,” and she really did hope it was only a bit, even though the way that she still felt fuzzy and lightheaded from only sitting up and guzzling down potions was not at all a good sign, “if I’m going to be off the roster, I can’t just lie around doing absolutely fuck all.”

“You are not,” James said, without looking up, “going back on that fucking roster.”

“Well, obviously, not for a few weeks, but James, when I do finally heal–”

“Never,” he said, cutting her off. “Not so long as I draw breath.”

“ _James!_ ” That was– that was serious, not precisely magic, not the sort of thing you could feel, not like some of the other fussy pureblood vows and things, but said in that tone? Said, in all seriousness, by the head of the house and the heir of the line, two distinct positions that James had always joked that the Potters had only recently even thought of tolerating falling on the same person? “James, you can’t.”

“I can and I have,” he said, simply, his tone pleasantly unyielding. The way he sounded when he was thinking of mischief. Of holding her down and tickling her, then rogering her until she squealed. He sounded happy. _Happy._

“James,” Lily said, “you will not tell me what to do with my life.”

Hearing that note in her voice made him look up, but from his small, patient smile, her blunt words had not made him waver. “Do you know,” James said, almost warmly, “what they told me, when you didn’t turn up at the owl box?”

Something in his face told her that she very much did not want to know. “James, I screamed fit to wake the dead, when the– when they took me. If they told you I was, if they told you I died…”

“They wouldn’t even let me look,” he said, in a rush. “Too dangerous, too much risk, and besides, you didn’t know much of anything, as per policy. So, most likely, they said, you wouldn’t have been kept for long.”

Cold, but scarily accurate. She very nearly didn’t know what to say, how to excuse what had been said to him, when it was only the same sort of thing she had been thinking, as the Death Eaters used her. “James…”

He pushed to his feet, abruptly, but didn’t move, didn’t pace the way she half expected him to, just stood there staring down at her. “We don’t presently agree,” he said, softly. “We don’t see this the same way, I know. If– when, when you’re well, you can do whatever you like. I will not– I only want to say that I won’t like it.”

She expected him to storm off then, still boiling with indignation, but instead he went on standing there, awkwardly. And then said, into the tense silence between them: “Would you maybe like some tea?”

She said yes, faintly, and sat there while he nodded, and turned around in a precise quarter circle and said, seemingly to the air near the half-open bedroom door, “Mimsy? Tea, please, with three sugars and a crumpet.”

“Yes, master,” the air squeaked back, and disappeared with a familiar little pop.

“We have a house elf,” Lily said, to her husband’s back, not precisely asking. Wondering. “Since when do we, er…”

“Since you needed watching,” he said, without turning around. “Since I couldn’t always stick around to do it, what with work and the raids and everything else.” And then left, with only a shuttered look back, before he closed the bedroom door firmly after him.

* * *

Things, if they got better at all, got better very very slowly.

The physical issues were, if unwelcome, not entirely new. Exaggerated in effect, but not new. Her thighs had chafed, and were an age in healing properly, despite the three different balms she knocked together to try and attack the issue. It was as if her body had absorbed more than its fair share of healing magic for the more serious injuries– blood loss, fractured bones and a concussion, all just from the wall that had rained down on her– so much so that minor things healed slowly, if at all.

Half of her hair, at some point, had just been cursed straight off. Not down to the scalp, not so bad as that, but it didn’t grow back very quickly, and so Lily had given up and cut it all fairly short, to just below her ears. Mimsy had helped hold up the three conjured mirrors, and commented primly on the wobbly edge at the very back. Then had very primly bullied Lily into allowing her to finish the job.

When James came home and saw the finished, slightly shorter bob, he stopped where he was, in the doorway, his eyes wide, his lips parted, saying nothing.

“It’s not too much,” Lily found herself saying, nervously, ruthlessly squashing the urge to reach up and fuss with the edges. Her head still felt oddly light, though not in the sick way she’d only slowly shed as the days went by, and her body recovered. “Is it?”

“It,” he said, “is perfect.” And he came all the way in, and kissed her, hard, the way he always did, these days, as if that was all he was allowed of her.

It wasn’t on that night, but on the next one, that she finally cornered him in their bedroom. “Lily,” he said, breathlessly, “I don’t really think…” So she’d silenced him, wandless, and he’d looked so very fucking startled that she’d ended up doing more than bringing him off the way she had planned.

 _On my tits,_ she had told herself, while she paced the bedroom floor as she waited for him to come up. _Me in control, him bound, maybe; it’ll definitely work._

What worked was him beneath her. Straining up against her, but not too much, because he wanted it so very badly. Tears in his eyes, as she rubbed herself on top of him, feeling dizzy, drunk in the fact that it felt alright, better than alright.

He was hers, still. Hers to tease. Hers to take inside her, inside the warm, wet ache she’d become, while planning this. Touching herself was all right, too, so she’d done that in the weeks that she waited for him, waited for him to stop holding his body away from her when they hugged. She’d only realized, yesterday, as he looked at her, that she would have to be the one to bridge the gap. That he’d always feel a bit dirty, doing it, wanting to do it.

It was even alright, later, to let him– force him, really– on top of her. It was different enough, too familiar in a good way, too much of what they’d always liked to do, to be part of what had been done to her.

James sobbed very beautifully as he came. _Good,_ Lily thought, smugly. _That’s done him, hasn’t it?_ Then he lowered his head onto her shoulder, and it was suddenly too much, too much like– “Get off me. Get _off._ ”

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have– you all right?”

“It’s okay, just your head, um, there.” And then she had to stop him from scrambling to the other side of the bed, with a weakly waving hand. “Come back, I’m really all right. Mostly.”

He did. Slowly. “My head…?”

“Leaning fully on me, on my shoulder, is, it isn’t good.” She didn’t know how not to be calm about it. Cold. It was as if someone had severed some feedback mechanism somewhere inside, as if her currently pleasantly sore, sticky cunt and languid, lounging limbs had nearly nothing to do with her. “He… he did that. Rosier, I mean.”

That it had felt intimate, that it had felt tantalizingly forbidden–

That she had told herself she might still be potioned, to excuse the betraying tightness she had felt inside, under Evan’s weight–

“He’s dead, you know,” James said, sleepily, as he flopped back down next to her. “When we find him.”

Lily very carefully took a breath in, and let it out. “Would– um. Could you consider. Not finding him.”

It had been told to her, over tea, on that first, fuzzy-headed awakening, what had happened after the wall fell in on her. _After Sirius,_ James had said, his tone joking, his gaze very hard, _tried to put a whole wall through you._

He still hadn’t forgiven that mishap, no matter what Lily said. _He thinks I have,_ had been the offhand answer, whenever she’d pressed. As if Sirius didn’t still come in smiling too brightly, and only ever hugged her now as if she were made of bone china.

Rosier, according to James, had simply Apparated away as soon as she went down, his expression blank of anything but fierce, calculating focus. James, looking past him, looking at his naked, bleeding wife covered by broken stone, had not felt able to follow. _You were barely breathing,_ he’d said. _Rasping, really, but that’s all gone by now, eh?_

And, as she’d stared at him, for managing to sound even a little upbeat: _I needed Sirius to help me carry you. And then to buy the Feversbane, because we were out. And then to sit with you while I got Mimsy. And then to be on my left in the raid we were almost late for, because you couldn’t be there, and Peter was down, and Remus was still laid up. And after that, well, it didn’t seem fair, not entirely, to turn around and kill him._

He had been looking at her then, in much the same way that he was now. Smiling, his eyes hard and bright and angry, his expression the very nearly unbearable one he wore when he felt he had just got off some capital joke.

“Lily,” he said, now, his eyelids lowering, “would you consider not signing to the Order’s active duty roster?”

“James,” she said, half hesitating, half wondering whether she ought say anything. Wondering whether the vow she had sworn to Evan had left her any real room to explain things. “Would you really think about leaving off, if I…?”

“Yes.”

Well, that was fucked. He sounded so certain, so seriously so, that she hesitated again, feeling stupid. Wondering what he thought of her, trying to decide to trade away her participation in the shitty war that had eaten her, that had eaten both their lives, just to save the skin of the man that had done, and ordered done, such awful things to her.

Then she thought of the other possible angle, the other plausible slant to her request, and seized on it with both hands. “Rosier is utterly mad,” she said, flatly. Sort of true. “The others, the other Death Eaters, were all so bloody frightened of him,” definitely true, “that if he’d snapped his fingers, they’d all have jumped.” Probably true. “ _Two_ of them, he killed _two_ of them, during, for, for…”

“Not just two of them,” James said, shocking her.

“But,” Lily stammered, “but you– the house shook, the shaking, I thought that was all you!” And she’d understood, at the time, even in her daze, what James’ appearance would likely have meant for any of the Death Eaters present in that house. She’d never even thought to ask, after, about what had happened to them. “And the wards…”

“The wards and the house were us,” he said, nodding slightly, shifting just that little bit closer to her. Even now, despite her shock, despite everything, Lily found herself welcoming his nearness automatically, threading her leg back between his beneath the blankets. “We counted three– no, four of them, lying dead. One in the, ah, the larder.”

“The larder,” she repeated, frowning. “I don’t… I was out, now and then. I suppose I missed that room.”

James’ jaw worked. “The larder,” he said, carefully, “was, was mostly empty. Empty shelving, and mostly bare stone inside. The– there were stains, on the floor.”

“Huh,” was all she could say, hearing that. “Must’ve been a large larder.”

For that, he gave her a Look. Before all this, before she’d been raped in, of all the places, Evan Rosier’s dingy country house’s oversized larder, _that_ particular look would have meant that she and James both cracked and started laughing. Now, all it meant was that his lips twitched, and she arched both eyebrows at him, and he closed his eyes and let the ghost of a smile form on his lips.

Which she of course had to lean forward, and kiss. Because even if the mutual, irrepressible cycle of laughter that had always used to boil between them was currently missing, she could still end things the same way, with a kiss.

Several moments later, James stirred beside her and said, to the air above them: “I won’t go after Rosier. Not alone. Not…” he waved his hand, abruptly, “not thinking of this.”

“Okay,” she said, relieved. “I’m off the roster for, let’s say, the next three months?”

“Five.”

She sighed. “You don’t go after Rosier with anyone,” she said, emphatically. “You don’t go after him if Merlin himself floats down and swears to help you avenge me.”

“Four months?”

“He could kill you,” she found herself saying, sharply, and not just as a gambit. The thought of it, the fact of it was so easy to imagine that it made her shake. “He _would_ kill you. He wouldn’t think, he’d just do it, the way he’s done everything else his whole miserable fucking life, and I cannot, I cannot accept–”

“Lily–”

“He’d kill you and come after me,” she said, into the hand she had pressed over her mouth, to keep the words unheard, unheard by whatever fucking sprite or fairy or spirit that heard such things, and went merrily twisting things about to make them come true. _I’d go with him,_ she managed not to say. _I’d go with him and beg to be his, beg if it’d keep me alive, and I’d have no other choice because you’d be dead._

Because now, as she sobbed soundlessly in James’ arms, she could imagine the chain of thought, the chain of circumstance that might cause that to happen. The chain of miserable events that would drive Evan to murder her husband and drag her before his lord and claim her as his prize.

 _I’m a Seer,_ he had said. _I do it,_ he’d also said, meaning bowing down before their world’s greatest evil, _so I don’t die._

He had never said that he was doing it all for her, that her life or death had figured in any way in his calculations. But he had taken her, had made sure to be the one in charge, that awful evening, the one in charge of taking her. He had ordered his fellows to toy with her, but leave her whole until his return, and when he had returned, he had killed everyone but her.

Everyone but her and Fordryn Simmons, who he’d quite deliberately cursed to dust in a moment of Simmons’ profound inattention. Simmons, who had been the next highest in the unspoken hierarchy of the group, the only one allowed between her thighs. Simmons, who might just have been enough of a danger, alert, that Evan had preferred to wait to take him when he was distracted.

 _I’m afraid,_ Evan had said, before he rutted into his hand on top of her, _that this is necessary._ Necessary, perhaps, for whatever story he’d planned to feed his lord about the series of bungles that had led to her being liberated from his grasp.

If he ever thought it necessary to kill James, for her, or for himself…

“I won’t ever go after him,” James whispered, now, not too near her ear, but not too far away to be heard. They had, some days earlier, worked out a comfortable distance, one that was still intimate without being unsettling. “Not even if he’s ever there, in battle, and he– and he trips in front of me and falls on his stupid face.”

That made them laugh a little, shakily, together.

* * *

When she began brewing again the very next day, making up bases with whatever she had to hand that had survived a few weeks of disuse, James didn’t say a word about it, about her needing to take it easy. He even came back, at the end of the week, with parcels stuffed full of yarrow root and willow bark and bloodthorn, that last being something that had got so short that no one even thought to put it on the short list anymore.

“Found it,” he said, triumphantly, “right in front of my nose, on a stakeout in Chichester. Might not be quite the quality you’re used to, but…”

“You’re a miracle worker,” Lily fervently said, and snogged him.

They snogged quite a lot, those days. Her sitting sideways on his knees, or squashed up beside him in bed, necking with him like they were back in some broom closet in Hogwarts, counting the minutes until they had to part.

Sex was slower now, more careful. After the daring, furious energy Lily had used to ride him that first time, things came back to her, and they weren’t all things she liked. She couldn’t get properly wet, now, without thinking about how it’d felt to struggle weakly beneath Simmons, to struggle and then give in, moaning, because she needed it.

It hadn’t happened that way, not precisely. Just to make sure of it, she’d done some tricky, flinching work with her memories, a carefully spelled bottle and one of the old Potter wands, taken up whenever James was out. It turned out that the sequence with Simmons, the one that tortured her most, hadn’t taken anything as long as she’d thought, and she’d looked awful, seen from outside herself, even with the arithmantic averaging of the _Memoria Traffere_ skewing her to look cleaner and fresher than she probably had, at that stage.

It took her knowledge of the symptoms of lust potion overdose, and her bone-deep memories of how trembly she had felt, imposing them on how she knew she looked now, when she was mostly healed and fairly well rested. It still made her look a white-faced wreck, struggling briefly, pathetically, beneath the fit, stocky frame of her attacker. She had moaned as he fucked her, but it hadn’t been her fault. She had provoked him into it, into putting his cock in her, about as much as she had provoked the whole lot of them into capturing and cursing and raping her for walking down the high street in Winslow, a free muggleborn that dared to exist.

 _Even if,_ she told herself, _I did say anything he thought was, was encouraging, even if I’d_ had _to ask for it, or else…_ Or else something worse would have happened, pick one of fifty fucking choices… “It wouldn’t have been my fault.”

The dreams, well, she didn’t know how to deal with those. Dreamless Sleep was not safe to use very long, and used buckets of bitterroot she just didn’t have. That the dreams weren’t terribly frequent wasn’t much comfort, when she’d wake from them sweating, an awful mix of terrified and horny, wild to move, wild to be restrained, able only to get up (none too carefully, as James slept like a pleasant man-shaped rock) and go downstairs to the library and drag out the stout little spell dummy to try and curse away her rage.

The dreams might have been a side effect of overdosing on Hecate’s Heat. Might even have been transference of some sort from the Divine Argent, because god knew she’d been forced to drink down enough magically multiplied semen that _some_ sort of unwanted reaction was almost expected.

She usually wanked, after getting the dummy so swollen with spells absorbed, with curses deflected, that it seemed to shimmer a bit, in the dark. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as it probably sounded, wanking like that, nerves singing from all that imaginary destruction. Sometimes, she’d go back upstairs and find James stirring awake, half naked, and predictably at half mast, and then she would look at him, lick her lips, and set about getting in on top of him.

She’d never quite appreciated, until those sweaty, tensely silent mornings, just how much he liked being under her. He wouldn’t stir, not really, until she straddled him, and then he’d open his eyes and part his lips and do nothing but rub, barely, against the bare skin of her thighs.

Sometimes, she gave in to his mute pleading right away, moving purposely, steadying herself with a hand on his chest as she squeezed him, hard, before guiding him right into her cunt. Sometimes, she only moved enough to settle the slick lips of her cunt on top of him, and would only get serious about moving again when he started trembling beneath her, tense and red-faced and desperate.

Sometimes, she’d tease him both ways, rubbing first, then letting his thick cock inside her, then only moving a tiny bit, rocking on him, squeezing. That, done for a few minutes, either had him spending then and there, sobbing, or, better yet, losing his head and grabbing hold of her hips and holding her firmly to him so he could thrust up, hard, the way she liked best, the way she still liked best, even after Simmons, God rot his fucking soul, had done his level best to try and ruin it for her.

* * *

She settled, after a while, into the new pattern of things. The war went on outside the walls of her and James’ home, while she brewed and shook and experimented and paced, and got steady enough, for the most part, that she could meet her old potions quota again without getting lightheaded toward the middle, or needing a lie-down at the end.

“You’re doing well,” Peter said, “up and brewing so soon, after.” He winced then, and coughed– a legacy of yet another spell that had taken him down a week ago, halfway through December. It had done a number on his lungs, something Lily was trying to work up a potion for, whenever she could spare a thought for it. The awkward, earnest statement, though, that was all just Peter, who, like Remus, had been told vague things about her having had, or had to induce, a miscarriage.

The Order, and indeed the general world, you see, had expected her to do almost exactly what she’d wanted to do as soon as she was mostly healed: get right back in it, get stuck in, her head held up, her wand that little bit more ready, her now most natural instinct bent toward the more lethal curses. Mere rape, in their eyes, could not have been enough to keep a fiery meddler like Lily Potter out of things– the wizarding world being at once horrified by, and curiously philosophical about said rapes, when they were acknowledged to have occurred.

So, her continued absence from the war effort, from the little social visibility it had been safe for her to have, had required a more serious explanation. A rape was one thing; a rape that resulted in pregnancy was quite another. A rape that resulted in a pregnancy that was then terminated– a natural, perhaps stress-induced termination, it was assumed– that, well, that was something else again.

Remus, for his part, was content to sit by her and tell her, if she asked, the latest gossip. Peter couldn’t sit in silence for one moment unless you hexed him, and so had chattered away about this and that as she watched the Skele-Gro in her cauldron through its delicate final stage, and that was how he’d come out with the thing Remus had carefully left unsaid.

James, over by the door to her cramped little lab, looked up from his perusal of the ingredient schedule to give Peter a flat, disapproving glance. Remus, catching the edge of that look, went a little pale; Peter went a ripe, mortified red and was silent thereafter, until it was time to leave.

“Shouldn’t have said anything,” he muttered, even as he went sorting through the vials she’d just racked up, marking them off on the list he’d been fidgeting with for the last five, or perhaps fifteen minutes. “Didn’t mean to remind you of–”

“Peter,” James said, with no intonation at all, and Peter fell abruptly silent.

Tired and woozyish from having previously finished off a round of Bexley’s Break-and-Mend (not for today’s list, it needed three days’ cooling first), Lily thought, for one long moment, of perhaps just letting the awkwardness roll on, the way she had been doing all December. Then she steeled herself and somehow found a smile to put up, and turned away from the extra-wide cauldron she had just spelled into stasis. “James, could I have a word in private, before you go?”

Naturally, he stepped forward immediately, looking a mix of concerned and wary. “Get on, you two,” he said, without looking at either of his friends, the words normal, the tone decidedly short. “Is the vapour from the Bexley’s too much?”

“Grab a scone each before you go, Peter, Remus,” Lily called out. “They’re Mimsy’s, and they’re cracking!” And then, as the lab door creaked shut behind the two of them, she turned on James. “Fucking stop it.”

Silence, as James looked at her, then away from her, a muscle working in his jaw.

“Peter meant well,” she said, pointedly. “He’s always sticking his foot in, we both know that, but he meant well, and anyway, if _I_ thought he needed his head lopped off for it–”

“For goodness’ sake, I hardly–”

“You fucking well know you stripped him. That look? That tone?” She sighed explosively, rubbing an aching hand through her hair, frustrated, suddenly, by the way it fell in her face even with an alice band _and_ a pinning charm. By the way the makeshift lab she’d set up in this former dining room had always been too small, too lacking in proper ventilation. By the half-stubborn, half-guilty look on her husband’s face. “It isn’t their fault, you know.”

“When have I ever said–”

“We both decided not to tell them details,” she went on, cutting him off, though that wasn’t precisely true. It had been James and Sirius’ decision to start with, and then hers, from apathy, from just sheer exhaustion, from never wanting to talk about any of it with someone that had not seen her in that wretched house, naked, crushed by stone and more than stone, suffering. “So they expect me to be, to be done in, still, or they won’t say the right things. I don’t mind that.” Well, she did, but not quite as much as she would have minded the conversation that would have been required to fix things. “I don’t mind it half so much as I mind your going all mother dragon.”

That made James almost smile. He scowled, quite aggressively, to try and cover for it. When that had clearly failed– when he saw her smirking at him– he half turned away, still scowling, just not quite so strongly. “I’ll stop,” he said. “I’ll try to stop.”

“Really.”

He sighed. He scowled again, then stopped, gradually, as he looked down at the crowded, messy workbench a little way off to his right. “Really, Lily? A dragon?”

‘Dragon’, or, more accurately, ‘ _The_ Dragon’, was Sirius’ old, mocking name for her. It’d never quite caught on much outside of Gryffindor, thank goodness; bad as it was having surreptitiously smoking fourth years take up the cry of “Dragon! It’s The Dragon!” when she came yawning through the common room on her way to breakfast, it would have been five times worse to have any of the older students from other houses doing it, especially during her trying first year as a prefect.

“Never have quite forgiven him for that,” she said now, sighing exaggeratedly. “Though I think by seventh year, all the younger years thought it was just in-house slang for ‘prefect’.”

“It won’t last,” was James’ response, said defensively as ever, even though he and Sirius were still at the stage of exchanging stilted jokes and out-of-step smiles whenever she was watching, so as to make it clear that things really were better between them now, honest. “I tell you, three years on, and we’ll be the only ones who’ll remember any of it.”

“Oh, get on with you,” she said, waving him off. “Don’t be any later in on my account.”

* * *

The new year dawned, and brought with it the decimation of the McKinnons. _The whole house,_ people said, at the hastily called Order meeting. _Gone, just gone. Marked._

Lily sat, wishing desperately that her rage could make her numb, instead of just angry, so angry that she could barely sit still. She had not much talked to Marlene. Marlene, formerly Marlene Alster, who still hesitated half a beat when called McKinnon. Marlene, who was in Records at the Ministry, who copied them the visitor logs and warned them all when the whispers started about Bagnold considering scything through the Ministry with Veritaserum and an innocent-seeming list of questions.

 _Are you,_ Marlene had read, her voice shaking with anger, from the crumpled parchment on which she’d made her hasty notes, _a sworn member of any group or organization that is, or has ever been, unregistered with the Ministerial Record?_

Nobody swore oaths, however unmagical, when joining their local Gardening Society. Death Eaters swore oaths, and were marked, or unmarked, as pleased their lord. Order members also swore oaths: symbolic ones that depended on honour and conscience alone, yes, but to the Ministry an oath was an oath. And of course they _were_ an unregistered organization, simply because you didn’t apply for tax waivers for the noncommercial use of a building for communal activities when most of those activities involved running around trying to keep people from being killed.

Marlene had been so very painfully glad when Bagnold’s infamous questions had been shelved. It had never been clear whether Tom McKinnon, perpetually assisting the British ambassador in Peru, had been at all aware of his young wife’s efforts for the Order.

Now, it would never be clear.

He had been at home, briefly, due to the season. They had all, according to the red-eyed, fuming Dorcas Meadowes, been bound for McKinnon Hall, to stay with the main branch, as was traditional. The main branch that had been summarily lopped off, erased, each of them now gone to ashes in the ruins of their house.

“Bagnold will act,” Meadowes said, only not in the usual, sniffily disapproving tone she adopted whenever she spoke of the Minister. Lily had heard, somewhere, that they had been at Hogwarts together, and that they had never got on. “She _will_ act.” Said fiercely, almost desperately, the way one did a prayer. “She will act, or she will be replaced.”

Replaced how, and by whom, was not immediately clear. Much as the Wizengamot railed day and night at Bagnold’s high-handed manner, and demanded explanations and apologies for everything from the soaring injury and mortality rates for DMLE employees to the botched raid on Rowle Hold, none of them had raised up any clear contender for Minister. The department heads chafed at Bagnold’s inaction, or complained at whatever action the Wizengamot would approve, but none of them had put themselves forward as a remedy.

At a time where half the Aurors’ efforts went to securing the Minister’s current residence– which changed randomly during the month, according to James– and all that effort still meant that Aurors and Hit Wizards regularly ended up availing themselves of their emergency bezoars, nobody sensible wanted to be Minister. At least not until the question of Voldemort could be settled.

Which, from the general mood in the room, seemed more and more like a question that would be settled shortly, and not, perhaps, in a way they would all like. They were crammed, chair by cheek by jowl, in the stuffy side room of a primly furnished, thoroughly nondescript muggle university’s conference centre. Empty as it was, half due to spells, half due to the ingloriously early hour, no one had wanted to sit and talk in the main room. Everyone had wanted somewhere smaller, somewhere that felt just a smidgen more hidden, that felt safe in a world they all knew was not safe.

“The Wizengamot,” Fabian Prewett said, very carefully, “will probably,” more like definitely, “not allow Bagnold to do anything of any worth.”

“If she sees sense,” Meadowes snapped, “and declares martial law–”

“Which they will draw and quarter her for–”

“Which, if she does it, is only way she’ll be alive to hear their grumbling, afterwards–”

“Martial law,” Dumbledore said, heavily, causing a brief, instant pause in the argument, “is but a poisoned chalice, Dorcas. It will free him to act much more than it frees any one of us, and considering our struggle to defend, considering how thinly we are already stretched…”

“So we wait?” Meadowes said, into the tense, somehow shrunken silence. “We just _wait_?”

“For the moment,” Dumbledore said, grimly, “yes.”

Dorcas Meadowes would not wait. You could see it on her face the entire meeting, the drive to act. Once the meeting broke, the Prewetts went to her immediately, talking, arguing with her in low whispers; Lily, watching them try to talk her down, remembered that she was their cousin’s aunt, or their father’s cousin’s aunt, or some similar snarled, convoluted connection, the type that purebloods all seemed to share with each other.

Dorcas Meadowes listened, mostly quietly, to the two young men, her gaze flinty, her mouth set. She did not soften an inch as she made her curt goodbyes, stalking out of the stuffy room without so much as a glance back. Dumbledore said nothing as he watched her go, though a brief hush fell again as she did so, as if everyone expected there to be some warning, some last attempt at persuasion.

* * *

Two weeks later, there came the news that the Wizengamot– _not_ the Minister– was considering issuing a Writ of Expanded Powers. Not quite martial law, which by law only the current Minister for Magic could declare, but close enough as to make the question academic.

The _Prophet_ brimmed with unease, strident, pseudonymous letter-writers gloating in triumph, eager for revenge, all while their proudly named opposites argued caution, restraint and consideration. The deliberate firing of the main residence of McKinnon Hall was strongly decried, was alleged to be one of the long list of black acts suspected to have been perpetrated by devious, unscrupulous allies of You-Know-Who.

On the eve of the vote on the matter of the Writ of Expanded Powers, Dorcas Meadowes was assassinated. According to the two members of the Wizengamot that had been invited to dine in her outdoor pavilion, she had gone striding back into the house, hurrying to take an urgent Floo call her house-elf had just notified her of, and though she had not soon returned, they had not been worried for her.

Then the wards had fallen, and the Dark Mark had bloomed into existence right above their heads, and they had, of course, fled immediately, without stopping to think to go inside after her.

That grisly task had been left to Gideon Prewett, who, upon finding that his scheduled evening try at flooing in to talk his great-aunt out of things was going nowhere, had decided to Apparate in. Fabian had gone along, for company– which was the only reason they either of them survived.

“He was there,” she’d heard Fabian croak, afterwards. As his side was stitched, as he choked down a full, nasty dose of Skele-Gro (his left leg, the bone pulverized from the knee downwards), as Lily tore apart the cupboards in search of a spare vial of Strengthening Solution, Fabian had repeated those three words over and over. “He was there. _He_ was there.”

Then, later on: “The vote won’t go forward. Not like this, not with old Dorcas just…”

The vote on the matter of the Writ of Expanded Powers did not go forward. It was not cancelled, however; merely postponed. Postponed, as if the actions it had been meant to sanction were all the sort of thing that could wait a month or three.

Bagnold moved, roughly a week after, declaring martial law. Setting forth the new, brutal means the DMLE would be allowed to employ, in the pursuit of justice.

Incensed by this ministerial overreach, this intrusion on their sphere of influence, the Wizengamot passed motion after motion of near-unanimous censure, tying up the Ministry in limbo during the mandated period of reflection some archaic law demanded that Ministry employees engage in whenever having received a properly attested motion of censure from the Wizengamot.

Bagnold, eventually, twisted enough arms and blacked enough eyes in private that the stream of motions slowed to a trickle, and then to an abrupt stop. In the few days of ridiculously enforced Ministry inaction, though, Edgar Bones and nearly every member of his rather sizeable family were murdered, in inauspicious twos and threes, while a rash of unnatural fires cut a swathe through Bristol.

* * *

On one of those horrible evenings, one of those after Edgar’s house had been hit, but before they’d found out what happened to his younger brother, Lily had argued her way back onto the roster. _Temporarily,_ she’d said, again and again and again, and then regretted it, in the stupid, selfish way you regretted things when you were sweaty and sooty both, too exhausted to be glad you hadn’t been there to see the body. Too exhausted to be properly dispirited at all.

“It should be them,” she found herself saying, late that night, as she and James sat down in their kitchen and stared tiredly at nothing. “Should be them, going round putting out fucking fires.”

“Mmm.”

A brief pause, not to catch her breath, because she’d already done that several minutes ago, or perhaps hours. Now, she just sat there, borrowed wand sitting still on the table, her dirty hands an inch away from James’ similarly dirty, loosely curled hands, and yet making her feel like they were miles apart. “They’re being random, now,” she went on. “I mean, not random, I mean more, I mean whimsical. Those last two houses were, I think they had the same style of roof.”

“Mm.”

“They chose,” she said, haltingly. “They chose those houses.”

Silence, and then a brief, warm touch, his hands folding hers into his, slowly, sharing his usual unnatural warmth.

Ordinarily, she’d have just sat there, letting the moment come and go, letting the endless rage within her boil up and then fizzle away, reduced to its usual sneakily seething state. Tonight…

Tonight, Lily felt herself squeeze back. And say, in a voice she heard as a low, tight growl: “ _We_ should choose. We could, you know.”

James smiled. “Alright,” he said, his voice suddenly, shockingly loud, echoing off the dim tile that surrounded them, an elegant grey-and-cream pattern that transformed into something strange and unsettling when the kitchen was mostly dark. “Choose, then.”

“James–”

“I mean it, choose.” But before she could say anything, he was already speaking again, his hands tight around hers, squeezing. “You’ve thought of a way past the wards of the place you have in mind, I hope? And the fact that, oh, if it is a main residence, a great house– which is what you’d want, of course– it’ll probably be Unplottable, and therefore a right pain in the arse to pin down.”

“You won’t even–”

“And the smaller residences, the cottages etcetera, well, it’d be one in the eye for the owner if they go up, but they’re hardly likely to be guaranteed to _contain_ the owner at the time, are they?”

Fuming, she wrenched her hands from his. “I was expressing,” she said, through gritted teeth, “a thought that you know we both share. I was hardly going to go out and– and–”

“Just making a point, then?” he said, his tone infuriatingly light. “Was that it?”

“ _James._ ”

“Well, if you say it’s just a thought,” he said, his tone hardening, “then it has to be, doesn’t it? Never mind the fact that you’ve been brewing, for _weeks_ now, draining yourself experimenting on just the sort of potion that could very well accomplish the effect you so clearly desire to share around with the bastards that’ve been keeping us up.”

She shut her open mouth with a click. Drew her hands back in toward herself, tucking them in under her armpits when she couldn’t stop them shaking. “I eased off,” she muttered. “I’ve only got the one cauldron going still, on that.”

“Oh, yeah,” was the sarcastic answer. “You threw out all the failures, and kept the success.” When she looked up to glare at him, he simply held her gaze with his, refusing to back down, refusing to let her off. Finally, she had to look down, look away, and even then, she felt him shift forward in his seat, heard his hands slide forward on the table. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

She couldn’t, so a heavy silence settled, a silence where her hands shook, and she hunched in on herself, and he watched, his caring, merciless gaze like a pin she couldn’t wriggle away out from under. A gaze that hurt.

“I won’t,” she finally said. “I wasn’t… it’s just, all right, fine, I won’t.”

James, politic even in his victory, didn’t push it. He sat there with her, in their dark, silent kitchen, waiting patiently as she tried to pull herself together. When it was time to go back upstairs, he came near, offering her his arm with a slow wink. Then held her, just held her, when they were finally in bed.

And said: “we don’t have to throw it away, you know, now that it’s made.”

And then added: “could be useful, couldn’t it?”

* * *

It _was_ useful, a week later, on a mission that was going sideways, when things had got hairy enough that someone, enemy or friend, was always popping out from behind a barrier and scuttling forward once they recognized her call sign, or stalking forward when they clearly didn’t know it.

She had Apparated– poorly, ever since Rosier and the rest, though all the recent, harrowing practice had helped. She’d ducked into someone’s back garden, near their shed, kicking her way through their snarly, territorial hedges, her hands already digging into her expandable pouch, her thoughts on which potion to dole out sparingly this time, and then–

There was a mask. She saw the mask, first. Then the shortish, gangly man that was wearing it, that was staring at her, transfixed by the same, brief horror of being surprised by the enemy.

He was wounded. She saw that too, the makeshift splint on his left arm, the dirty white cloth standing it out against all the black.

He raised his wand, his hand tight around it, the point shaking.

She altered the path of her hand, directing it to the pocket she’d oh-so-carefully stuffed, this morning, with carefully spelled, carefully filled potion sacs.

“ _Im–_ ”

 _Imperio,_ she thought, _probably._ And tossed, perfectly, because James had made her practice, had stood around chortling over the irony of her finally having any use for all his endless Quidditch metaphors. _From your shoulder,_ he had said. _Use– like that– your whole body._

The sac burst, an odd, murky splash against dark robes. Igniting.

 _Should that have…?_ she had time to think, before his screams began. One scream, really, one hoarse, piercing yell. And then she was tossing again, because she’d tested it, and two sacs were required to keep the reaction going, the self-fuelling fire that ate of your target’s magic until there was nothing left.

 _The Outer Flame,_ she’d named it, to James, sarcastically, though it only barely worked like the Inner Flame curse. She’d tried for something along those lines, and found that it either tried to eat up her cauldron during the brewing, or licked pleasantly at her hands, and burned away nothing but her sense of smell.

Eventually, she’d realized that what it required wasn’t an activator, not one in the common potions sense. It, all of it, needed no activator, for the manner of flame she sought was nothing she could lay to stable rest in a potion, if she wanted it ready to lob at people at will. The flame began, necessarily, as her intent, symbolically bound to the potion with nearly enough blood to be worrying, and then released by a strong, focused, deliberately aimed thought.

It hurt her too, to ignite it. Which James had heard her say, and looked concerned, though not enough, again, to stop her. _It’s an exchange,_ he’d said, warningly. _The most basic kind of blood sacrifice. Too much, and…_

It was understood that she would never use too much.

Two sacs per person. Two to three rounds of sacs, and she was to stop and take a break and fight like a normal witch. If there was anything left to fight.

That time, all that remained was the blackened, shrivelled mask, that and Lily backed against the eerily quiet hedgerow, because the fire had spread rather a bit more than she’d liked the look of.

* * *

The next time, well, the next time was a lot better.

“Is the little mudblood lost?” one of them said, when they spotted her. “My, my, Diarmad, look what we have here.”

“A lovely, lovely lamb,” another one said, his low, hoarsely excited voice sending chills through her. “You really must let me have first crack, you had the last one.”

“No,” the third one said, her cultured voice sharp with anticipation, “no, Diarmad, _you_ had the last one. It’s my turn, now, you scoundrel.”

Before, before Rosier, Lily would have gone for the woman first. Now, she went for the two men at the same time– risky, though she staggered her throws slightly, so she could spot it if they didn’t hit.

They hit, accompanied by the sound of Diarmad’s hoarse, brief laughter, and by the woman’s worldly sigh. “Simples,” she said, her tone disgusted. “She’s throwing _simples_ , by all that’s– yeurgh, you– you absolute–”

The third had hit her in the mouth, though Lily had been aiming to hit the chest, the way she’d aimed the others. _Ignite,_ she thought, recklessly, though she’d only tossed one sac at each of them, though the fuel she’d just splashed them with wouldn’t be enough to get the job done.

Or so she thought.

When they lit, the rush she felt drove her to her knees. The power flowed out, the weight of it dragging her down, anchoring her to the dusty, dirt-strewn floor of the barn they were within. _The barn,_ she thought, sluggishly. _Can’t stay here, can’t be in the barn, or I’ll burn too._

The woman’s screams, oh, her shrieks were something. More loud, in the confined, increasingly stuffy space, than Lily had probably been, when it was her alone against many, staring her certain death in the face.

The woman screamed and screamed, and as Lily crawled, she felt sharply, stupidly, uselessly sorry for her. But not quite sorry enough to stop it, to take hold of the potion-fuelled flames clawing and tearing through flesh and try to bring them to heel.

It had felt, in fact, like it might be beyond her to peel away command from that section of flame. She continued to inch her way around, crawling past the screaming, writhing, brightly burning trio, not quickly, nearly not quickly enough to be safe, her every movement a trial, her conscious mind shrieking at her to hurry, hurry, hurry. Her unconscious mind sleeping, tangled and absorbed in flame.

When she came to, moments later, she was out in the field, curled haphazardly on her side, the roaring heat of the barn before her.

She had not been sure, until a half hour later, if the barn would ever stop burning. By then, though, it was nothing at all to do with her, just an odd little hazard viewed with the rest of today’s motley team, Peter and Caradoc and Dedalus Diggle, the latter of whom seeming simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the unnatural phenomenon.

“Spontaneous ignition, you say?” he said, when it finally began to diminish, the bright flames guttering and spitting fretfully. “Hell of a thing.”

“You’re sure you’re all right,” Peter said to Lily, for perhaps the twentieth time. “You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “It wasn’t instant, you know. I had time, if only just.”

Reassured, Peter turned on Diggle, his shoulders set, his expression mulish. “We’re out, then,” he said, flatly. “Should’ve been out twenty minutes ago.”

“But we can’t just _leave_ it,” Diggle said, causing Caradoc to give Lily an exasperated look, and take a slight step forward. “Dearborn, you agree, don’t you? It’s nearly all farmland around this, and while I know it’s looking all right now, if the wind picks it up and drives it…”

“We’ll lay a ward,” Caradoc said, soothingly. Then added, when Peter glared at him: “A quick one, no fuss about it, come on, now.”

Midway through their hasty joint casting of a standard Firebane ward, the fire guttered once again, and suddenly went out, leaving the blackened, shivering remnants of the barn to stand witness to all their sour expressions.

“ _Now_ can we leave?” Peter demanded, and was answered with a waspish nod.

On the report, they put down ‘mission curtailed by spontaneous combustion of unoccupied structure within scouting radius, likely precipitated by misaligned/oversensitive warding of elements germane to the structure’. Which was a nice way of saying they knew fuck all about why the fire had started, and they hadn’t hung about much to look at its remains, lest their presence there be discovered.

Which it hadn’t been, thanks to Lily. Those three Death Eaters should have been in the town five miles off, and yet they had been creeping about the outskirts of the abandoned farm where she’d been stuck, the farm everyone was sure would be bypassed by any hostiles, in favour of going at the the still-functional manor house a half mile away. Which was where Caradoc and Peter had been, at least until Diggle spotted the barn going up and called them both down from their perches.

“You,” James whispered, cornering her after the crush of alarm and relief and disappointment had let go of her and the rest of the team. “You are completely mad.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” she said, blinking innocently. “It _was_ the wards, I’m sure of it. There were certainly enough of them up at the manor, and the barn was just within their radius.”

“Mad,” he muttered, and kissed her hungrily. “You weren’t faint, using…?”

“One each,” she whispered. “Apparently, proximity’s got some, um, some leeway, if the targets are very close together.” Which they had been, coming at her like that through the half-rotted barn wall, one of their spells peeling it down quietly from outside. “Next thing, I’m going to try some keyed to you.”

* * *


	4. nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for character death. Yeah, I know this is a bit late. Sorry >.>

## nightmare

Lily soon found that keying the potion to James, to his intent, to his activation, would require him to brew the thing from start to finish. His adding blood to her efforts at the right time turned the potion into a sleek, shivering lump, one that fizzed and smoked when prodded (with dragon-hide gloves on, they were neither of them that keen to lose a hand), but never ever caught flame, not even when she lost her head and aimed an _Incendio_ into the cauldron.

The second try, the one where she stood by James and guided him through, was just the usual Potter disaster. He stirred a little too hard, spilled a good bit of the powdered stillwell onto the table, and didn’t chill the cauldron fast enough after adding his blood, and the end result was a pale pink gloop instead of the murky, almost silvery grey liquid that it should have been.

“It’s okay,” she’d said to him, soothingly, because he was looking rather unpleasantly flushed by the end, his hands shaking from sheer adrenaline, all that mad focus of his turned in on the sort of task he’d really rather not have been doing. “I’ve made it, or made steps of it, something like a hundred times. You just need practice.”

“Practice we can hardly afford,” he muttered, curling and uncurling his stirring hand as if it were bothering him. “The ingredients alone–”

“They’re cheap,” she said, cutting him off. “Cheap and easy to get, because I chose them that way. And I’m telling you, James, it’ll all come out right, eventually. A little more practice, and you’ll get it.”

She’d already been thinking of a way to simplify the brewing process without losing too much power, because she’d noticed all the way back in her third year at Hogwarts that James Potter could follow instructions, and could even obtain decent results, but the moment you put him to a deadline, the moment he understood the potion would earn marks, he was constantly watching himself, second-guessing every motion, rushing about when he should have slowed, slowing when he should have been speeding up.

_Perhaps,_ she thought, as she kissed him goodbye the next morning, _perhaps it could all boil twice, and give him time that way, so he doesn’t have to muck about getting everything in before it’s reached the first boil._ Then, of course, she had to try the variation out, to see if by some quirk, it actually managed to double rather than reduce the potion’s strength, because it had just occurred to her, again, that it _wasn’t_ a standard potion, it was just mostly magic herbs, tears, blood, and will, with a bog-standard saline base. Its ingredients were inert without the blood, and with the blood, were only potential, only fuel awaiting the spark of will.

She finished the variation that day, with only one brief break for lunch. She decanted it, cursing her shaking hands, cursing the creaky old filling rack she was forced to use. She scowled as she filled each fresh sausage casing– the cheapest and easiest way to obtain a bunch of similarly sized sacs that didn’t need to be charmed to burst on impact. She’d burned a finger on the edge of the cauldron, earlier on, and it was still slowing her down.

“Mistress,” Mimsy said, tearfully, from behind her, and Lily nearly dropped– could have nearly dropped the whole cauldron–

“ _Christ!_ ” She’d spilled a little on the floor, but the flagstone wasn’t even smoking, the faint blood link tugging on her mentally, bereft, upset, she’d almost call it, that she had withheld her permission to ignite. “Mimsy, we talked to you about popping in down here without saying anything; I haven’t fainted in months, I don’t need…”

That wasn’t the blood link to the potion.

Which was inert, remember, inert potential she was newly afraid to spill about without a care, having watched it eat up Death Eaters.

Shaking suddenly, Lily set down the cauldron on its three legs, rotating it so that the legs slotted into the indentations she’d carved into the table. She added a stasis charm, then, not that it needed it– inert.

So, with it most definitely inert–

“ _Tempus,_ ” she snarled, after having snatched up her borrowed Potter wand. Twenty past eight.

_With the potion inert,_ she thought, as she stared at those dissolving, terrifying numbers, _what’s tugging at me? Why do I feel a new, active blood link?_

James had been supposed to be home by seven. Seven-thirty, at the latest.

“Mimsy,” Lily said, barely hearing herself, “hold the house.”

“Yes, Mistress,” was the fierce– terrified– and utterly obedient answer. It was nearly more than Lily could do then, not to burst into tears, because Mimsy had always called her mistress, but never like _that_.

_No,_ she thought, as she ran up the small flight of steps, took the turn, the corner, into the living room, ruinously fast, just barely clearing the walls, the sofa, the coffee table. The Floo lit on its own, a sudden roar that stopped her dead, aghast, suddenly, that this was it, and she didn’t even have her fucking wand, she’d left it, left it on the _lab table_ , like a fucking stupid–

That was Remus, in the flames. Remus, looking like death. “The Cobb, then Mungo’s,” he said to her, hoarsely, and pulled out, so she could scramble through, still wandless, her hands shaking too much to fling the Floo powder in the graceful arc she’d tried to copy from James–

James.

James.

* * *

That he wasn’t dead didn’t help. He looked like he should be dead, like he was hanging on somehow with fiendish, arcane magics, the sort that the Ministry would bang even an Auror in Azkaban over. Even a young, popular Auror, the sort the DMLE would think for a moment or two about whether they could, perhaps, just this once, hush things up and let it slide.

Which was the joke that Sirius was currently making, more out of desperation than any real need to make James smile, because he had been smiling the whole time, from the moment Lily had been ushered into his private room.

“Here’s,” he’d said, his voice thinner and drier than the rest of him, an unsightly rattle beneath it, like he was grinding things inside himself to speak, “here’s my pretty dragon.”

She couldn’t not smile, then, like an idiot. But she couldn’t add to the joke. “You bastard,” she’d said. “You fucking bastard.”

The Healer had frowned at her. Even as James had laughed– rattling, rattling– the Healer had given her a pointed look.

But by then, Lily had been more than past caring how she looked, how she must be coming off, tearless and smiling down upon her surely dying husband, and calling him, to his wheezing, laughing face, a bastard.

“Is there nothing?” she finally said, when James had fallen silent, his eyes drifting half-closed, his hand as hot in hers as it had always been. “Nothing at all to be done?”

The Healer, a middle-aged man with a quite magnificently disapproving frown, suddenly looked taken aback. Perhaps because he hadn’t expected her to make it sound worth his life if he answered in the affirmative. “I’m afraid so,” he said, “Mrs. Potter.”

“ _Lady_ Potter, if you please,” James said, without opening his eyes, his tone not quite freezing, but certainly promising to be. “My wife, alas, is yet too modern to be conscious of her station, so I find I am always called to do it.”

“Y-yes, Lord Potter.” It had often astonished Lily when he did that, when James put on the manner that made his friends laugh– Sirius, especially– and somehow, the person he was aiming it at would flinch, and start stammering. “No offence intended, Lord Potter, Lady Potter.”

“So noted, Healer Pritchard.”

‘So noted,’ as if he were, as if he were the man’s _professor_ , rather than at least half his age, and a patient, and oh, don’t forget, dying of some perniciously untreatable ailment.

“James,” Lily said, realizing, suddenly, that there _was_ something to be done, something that should be done, “who was it, that cast this?”

The humour in the droop of his half-closed eyelids, the slight curl to the edge of his mouth, she’d expected all that to disappear, to firm up, as he prepared himself, fruitlessly, to deny her that essential knowledge. “Oh, my dearest, my most vengeful dragon,” James said, his humour still firmly intact, his eyes widening dramatically, “do you think so ill of me, that you should see me cast so low, and think that you may yet still need to avenge me?”

“Tell me,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Tell me who it was.”

“Even if all you may do, really, is desecrate his grave?”

“This is a foul fucking time to be joking with me,” Lily hissed, unable to help herself. “I bet the four of you,” she said, directing her gaze around her, at Remus, at Sirius, at Peter, “cooked this up, thinking I couldn’t–” and then she remembered the Healer, remembered they had a duty to report threats, mortal threats, especially, which was the sort she was about to make, about to _carry out_ , once they’d told her. “One of you will tell me.”

“He’s dead,” Peter blurted out. “On my honour, Lily, he passed two hours ago, from backlash, down in the general ward, so would you _please_ –”

“I still haven’t heard a name.”

“Gabriel Wilkes,” James said, with ghastly relish. “Did himself in just to get me, the poor fool.”

“So,” she said, hating the way her voice was wavering, “so you’re telling me he died, of, of _backlash_?”

“He was already half-dead, before,” was the slightly more serious answer. “I missed his wand arm, you see, in the melee. Thigh shot, among other things.” Which meant that the slash-and-cauterize manoeuvre, the most brutal legal combination that James was willing to use, had hit Wilkes in the thigh instead of neatly lopping off his wand arm, which could easily, if he’d survived being taken in, have been reattached.

Probably, the stress of the other things that had hit him, or the general situation, had drained Wilkes enough to really frighten him, and so he’d thought he’d go out with a bang, taking someone with him.

_Taking_ James _with him,_ Lily thought, and for one, long, terrible moment, she found herself thinking of what might be done, what could be done, if she had been able to get access to Wilkes’ dying body, to the draining shell of the bastard, the fucking worthless bastard that was dragging James down with him.

She hunched over the large, hot hand she held in hers, trying not to squeeze too hard. Trying not to cry.

If Wilkes had been before her now, sobbing for forgiveness, she would have cut him open with her bare hands. Neck incision, hang him up on the sturdy old chandelier above them, her hands shaking as she painted runes in his slowly spilling blood, all while James stared up at her, disapproving, refusing, perhaps, to partake.

_Get me his blood,_ she wanted to say, to order, in the same freezing, lordly tone James used to cut around him. It wouldn’t do any good now, but she still wanted it. Wanted something in her hands, something to do work with, something to do to stop this. Something to pretend to do, to stop this.

“They’re a smaller line, the Wilkes,” James said, now, his voice grinding away, his hand squeezing hers, only a little more weakly than she was used to. “I’d much rather, my dearest dragon, that you let this end here, with him and I.”

Giving her advice, already. Worrying for her, there was that in his voice, beneath the wry humour. Worry and love.

Lily bent her head over his hand, and wept.

It was the last time she would cry in public. She swore it to herself, over and over, hiccuping, shaking, all the more upset because she knew how it would make her look, blotchy and weary and bereft, and she knew it would make her smiles for him look fake, tremulous and weak.

She didn’t want her last moment with him, his last sight of her, to be her red-eyed, red-nosed face. She didn’t want to hear him call her beautiful, whispering it into her hair, and know he was only being partial at that moment, blinded by his love.

“Ssh,” he said. “Ssh.”

* * *

Hours later, he was gone. Almost, she didn’t believe it, though she watched as they wrapped him, as they floated him into a coffin.

She watched, dry-eyed, her face annoyingly blotchy, her hands in loose, useless fists by her sides. She had leaned on Remus in the private room, when– when–

She leaned on no one now. She had something in her spine, something keeping her effortlessly straight, shoulders back, untouchable, despite the evidence of tears on her face.

Condolences were tentatively offered. Carefully accepted. “I will make arrangements, in the morning,” she said, of the funeral. That it wasn’t properly morning yet, that it had all happened, that James had just disappeared, had been blown out of her life in one night, it, it burned.

It burned, and went on burning.

* * *

The funeral passed.

“Lady Potter,” some murmured, as they came to her in the receiving line. “Mrs. Potter,” said others, some absently, some tearfully, some meaningfully, emphatically. Reminding her of her place.

Wooden-faced, stone-hearted, Lily smiled and nodded, and noted each speaker of each emphatic _Mrs._ She surely did not feel she would survive long enough, now, to do anything with such a mental list, but she noted them anyway. Noted them, and hated.

She felt the mood change, whispers rippling through the gathered crowd, when she came to the point in the public ritual where the family ring was supposed to rise from the earth, propelled by magic. That it did, a moment later, rising on a ghostly flame, was obviously not gratifying to some of them.

_A flame,_ Lily thought, and almost, almost wept. The symbol for the passing of the ring was no accident; it was chosen, deliberately, by the passing family head. Written into the will with their blood, with nothing but magic there in the room with them to bear witness.

She had always thought, but never, ever said, that her affinity with fire was not innate, not really. That it had called to her from James. That she had learned fire from him, when she stole him away.

And now, his last gift to her, presented by flame: the Potter ring. The outward manifestation of the thing that had already been true from the moment that foul spell had dug into his magic, which had happened at approximately nineteen minutes past eight, last night, prompting Mimsy to appear in the lab, all desolation.

_I don’t want it,_ she’d have told him, if there had been the time. _I can’t fucking carry this, too._

Yet, here she was. Carrying it.

Weathering the stares as she slipped on the Potter ring, muggleborn and very nearly untrained, by the standards set by former Potter heirs, and alone. With few friends, and no true wand, and nothing in her heart but a stolen fire that burned, unceasing.

“The line continues,” she said, as the appropriate time to spend in silence ended. “The line first, before all.”

“The line first, before all,” her watchful audience echoed, and it was done.

James Potter had been laid to rest.

* * *

Lily burned most of the letters that came, consoling, beseeching, encroaching. She was shocked, despite herself, at the speed with which that last sort of letter emerged as a definite category, not two weeks after she’d seen her husband’s coffin swallowed by the earth in the Potters’ private crypt at Godric’s Hollow.

She was, on departing the funeral, immensely glad that they had not chosen to stay in the house there, as spacious and lovely as it had seemed. _Too obvious,_ they’d both said, wistfully, and huddled together just inside the entry, planning what they’d do to refurbish it when the war was over.

If she had been in that house, the house that they, together, had furnished for the future…

The safe house in Devon, the one they’d furnished hastily and lived in for the past year or so, that was bad enough. But there, at least, she could realize when she was being ridiculous, sobbing fit to break her heart over the rackety armchair James had used to lounge alone in, because she’d refused to trust herself to its springs.

The armchair didn’t smell like him, either, when she gave it a forlorn sniff. Just like itself, like old, fusty leather, with an undertone of the lemon-lime abomination Mimsy liked to slather all the leather furniture with.

So, after the first week, Lily had burned it. Not just with simple fire, though she did that to start with, toying with the thought of Fiendfyre even as she poured on _Incendio_ after _Incendio._ When it was burning merrily, she reached into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out a sac, and frankly smashed it in, her aim wild but true, her breath ragged with rage and a need for a purer, crueller fire.

The armchair went up beautifully. It was years old, something they’d found squatting in a lane somewhere just outside Exeter, a forgotten casualty of someone’s move, someone’s cleaning frenzy, and though it may only have been sat in by muggles, there seemed to be just enough magic in it to set it going like a squashed, ugly torch.

Putting it out was easier now, too. She didn’t know why, and for a moment, it made her so angry that the chair smouldered anew, leather squeaking, popping, shrivelling in the heat.

“Oh,” she muttered, finally, “does it even fucking matter?” And put the fire out again, thoroughly, then went back inside the house, to her true task: improving the brew.

Two separate boils had concentrated the effect. A careful, fine-tuned, rolling boil had given her a surge in effectiveness, one out of all proportion with what she thought it should have done, something that tormented her for days, until she reread some of her notes and cross-referenced an intriguing concept she found in, of all the things, an old History of Magic notebook, where she had been doodling about common methods of refining formulas.

_The longer magic brews,_ she’d written down, _the stronger the final effect, CR._ She hunted and hunted for the person behind those initials in the small pile of texts she could lay hands on, at home, until she found some old _Potions Weekly_ articles speaking ill of the vile but profoundly effective methods discovered by one Caerwyn Robards in the fourteenth or perhaps sixteenth century. She remembered shuddering over even the carefully vague descriptions of the experiments he had conducted, and then going on to try it herself, as innocuously as possible, on the shampoo she’d been tinkering with for what felt like her whole Hogwarts career.

It’d worked just well enough to be satisfying– her hair had been gloriously soft and smooth for two straight weeks per wash– but brewing the damn shampoo in that fashion had taken so much effort that she’d just gone back to the old formula, which didn’t require sweating over a cauldron for nearly a whole day.

She had days now, for brewing. Days and days and days.

* * *

She didn’t burn or throw away all the letters she received.

One came from Georgie Hooper, Georgie Whitby now, which she signed at the bottom with an all-too-familiar, simpering flourish. The body of the letter, though, was sound. Not too much time wasted on being ever so sorry, or even on offering help that they both knew would not be given. It was nearly all practicalities, such as where to take the estate pieces she didn’t want to keep, or who to hire to overhaul Potter Manor in the event of a future sale, or perhaps a future move into it.

Where to have the reading of the will, because an at least semi-public one would be expected, since she’d gone really rather traditional for the funeral itself. Gringotts was mentioned, as were the offices of the Potters’ law firm, Alster & Merrywood, both of whom would no doubt be vastly accommodating to her wishes.

The second letter was from Mr. Merrywood, and was also relentlessly practical, and full of similar advice as Georgie had shared, only with a more marked bias towards her selling everything and upping sticks as soon as humanly possible. Asserting her rights as Lady Potter– which also included, as far as she could tell, some convoluted fraction to the Right to Assign for a hereditary seat on the Wizengamot– Mr. Merrywood bluntly told her, was not an endeavour worth her life.

The third letter, another on the same theme, was from Jemima. Whose shaky handwriting and smudged words and heartfelt plea for Lily to please just see sense and come away from there were almost, almost effective. Because she knew that Jemima dreaded, the way anyone away from things must surely dread, that the next letter she’d have from Lily was one that had been sent posthumously, by lawyers or by friends.

The letter that decided her, that truly cemented her decision to stay, was nothing like any of the previous three. Cool, genteel felicitations and condolences were offered from one Ardenia Wilkes. An offer was made, for restitution in the most traditional manner, to a family that had been unjustly deprived of an heir. _As I possess no more sons of my body,_ the letter read, _I offer the closest substitution, the son of my cherished sister, one Edgar Damien Aubry, who is unmarried and of good constitution, and sure to be a balm to the bleeding wound dealt to you by the hand of our severed branch._

Lily, on reading that, and then on pulling out the crabby little book she’d consulted while organizing the funeral, just to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the contents of the letter, put aside both letter and book and took up a pillow to scream against.

That she didn’t burn anything was a miracle.

That she didn’t send, immediately, a response written in turquoise ink that said she refused the offer– that said the only way she’d ever welcome a Wilkes, or a nephew of a Wilkes into her anywhere or anything was if they came dying, and begging prettily to be finished off–

She made a copy of the offending letter for herself, as a reminder. Then she dried her eyes and charmed her hair in place, and told Mimsy to hold the house while she went out, a task that Mimsy very clearly disliked doing, but could not yet find some appropriate way of refusing to do.

(She’d popped in for the funeral, because Lily hadn’t given her any orders. It had been ridiculously unsafe– the wards on the house were stronger with someone, with anyone in it– but Lily had pretended not to notice, and had never spoken of it.)

The letter was laid before the Order, before Dumbledore’s frowning face. “None of the others,” Lily said, when asked, “have directly asked a response.”

Some had begged one, but she didn’t mention that; an invitation to a winter ball was not at all on the level of a stupendously unwanted marriage proposal, not in how rude it was to ignore it.

“Hmm,” said Dumbledore, and asked after the wards on the Devon house. “We must take this very seriously.”

Seriously, he meant, because Lily was now especially vulnerable. Not because the most likely result of an attempt at forcing her to marry anyone would result in the entire wedding party going up in a pillar of flame.

Not that she minded the weary concern with which Dumbledore et al looked at her; it would make them all, she thought, _much_ less likely to get in her way.

“I can help re-ward this weekend,” Remus offered, and it ended in him, Peter, Sirius, Caradoc and– ridiculously– all three of the Longbottoms trooping over that very Sunday, making a bizarre picnic out of the deadly serious affair.

Alice, round-cheeked and softer than usual, and constantly breaking off to hand sleepy little Neville off to someone else, confessed to Lily, in a quiet moment, that she’d been going mad with the forced inaction, that she didn’t know what she’d do now that the Head Auror was hemming and hawwing over her request for a tentative start date, asking pointed questions about whether she was _really_ ready to come back, and if she didn’t think she’d regret it.

“I love Neville,” she muttered. “I love him to death, but he’s– he’s doing _fine_ , he’s just started sleeping through the night, did I tell you? And well, with that, and with all the elves practically fighting over who gets to put him down, there’s only so many times you can re-order the library or, or take a look at the drainage in the gardens, and I– I just–”

“You know how it is,” Lily said. “You tell Frank, then he tells Head Auror Whitby, and insists, and then they’ll all look at you funny until you’re the one that sorts out that fucking nutter, Yaxley.”

“I was _so_ close, last February! _Fucking_ Yaxley. And my god, that mother of his, acting as if we were–”

“Are you two really going to let us do all the work?” Caradoc said, half-smiling, but wearing that expression that said he was really quite tired of trundling on without you, so would you please get back into it. So Alice rolled her eyes and took Neville back from the crib she’d settled him in, and went back inside the house, because Frank had apparently flatly nixed her participation in the strenuous stuff they were going to do with blood and salt and topsoil.

She rejoined, later, and Lily felt a whisper of what might be Mimsy singing to Neville, and then it was all spacing out evenly around the house and casting and casting again.

Nobody said anything when Lily made careful cuts on both her palms and the bottoms of her feet, and walked the rough border of the property. She was shaking by the end, shaking and cold and angry, so angry that she felt Remus’ healing spells as an unnecessary indignity.

No one said anything, either, when she cried silently in the kitchen, as she and Caradoc reheated some soup for dinner, while Sirius hovered within an arm’s length of the both of them, radiating agitation.

Sirius hung back, after, and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, and said, low-voiced, but steady, that if she needed help with the Wilkes, she’d only to ask.

“James didn’t want it,” was all she said, her voice thready and horribly weak, the way it got when she had to speak of him here, when it was so very obvious that he wasn’t there. “He wouldn’t have liked it.”

“They’re pushing,” Sirius insisted. “That letter… It’s not a fucking reconciliation they’re offering, that’s for sure.” Then, when she said nothing: “You’ll let me know, alright? Promise?”

“Promise,” she lied, just to get him out of the house, because with him there, with him there when he’d rarely been by alone, rarely been by to stop in and see her when James wasn’t there… “I’m fine, and I promise I’ll tell you.”

“Hmph,” Sirius said, and kissed her awkwardly on the cheek, and gave her a long, searching look before he headed for the fireplace.

_Got to tone it down for him,_ she thought. _More sad, less angry._ Though she wasn’t sure what that last look had been about, not exactly.

* * *

She gave it a thought, now and again. How she should act, what she should be like. She never really settled on anything.

* * *

Petunia, who hadn’t come to the funeral, despite the invite, Petunia _said_ she was sorry, _said_ it was awful, what had happened, but her familiar, sharp gaze was almost triumphant, and when Dursley said something blustery about how Lily’d been very young to get married, anyway, Petunia nodded along, as if _she_ hadn’t been just a couple years older than when _she’d_ got married.

“If you need a place to stay,” Petunia said, thinly, and Lily was glad to be able to shake her head and smile and say no, thank you.

She very nearly didn’t bother renewing the wards, before she left. Half of why she did it was the very practical reason that anyone who got their hands on her sister would be able to use all manner of augury to find or hurt Lily with Petunia’s blood. The other half was because of that awful, awful Christmas. The day she’d gone to bed, unknowing, all while her parents had suffered and died.

She wanted to know, at least, if Petunia went the way of the rest of her family. She wanted to know the exact moment it happened.

* * *

Lily gave herself one chance, one last chance to let something talk her out of her mad plan. Her really quite stupidly risky revenge.

Fact: there was one house, one great house she knew the location of, because nearly everyone knew where Malfoy Manor was, in Wiltshire.

Fact: the Malfoys weren’t known to be hosting Death Eaters directly, because Malfoy Senior was ill, and it would have upset him– not the fact that the Death Eaters were murdering thugs, of course, but the fact that they weren’t all close family, all known to him. However, this also meant that things at the Manor were likely to be just a bit slow, a bit distracted, unwary.

Mimsy, when sternly pressed, had confirmed that the directive, the main directive for all the Malfoy elves in the event of say, an unnatural, unstoppable fire, would be to secure the line above all.

“But, Miss,” Mimsy said, her hands knotted tightly around each other, “they will not _know_ it is unstoppable, they will be trying…”

“They’ll know,” Lily said, “because you’ll tell them.”

It had already been revealed that certain wards, most wards, really, were no proof against the house elves of a family you weren’t directly feuding with. To secure a space against entry by any house elves unbound to one’s family, blood sacrifice was needed, and it generally took more blood than any one elf contained, and so very rarely, very _very_ rarely did anyone bother to do it. There were wards that went against all elf apparition, but of course that’d mean they couldn’t pop about doing the necessary, and you couldn’t have that.

“Miss,” Mimsy said, for perhaps the thirtieth time, “this is very dangerous, Miss.”

“No one’s to be hurt,” Lily said, giving the potion a final, decisive stir. “Only the house will get it.” Because she didn’t want to try her hand at seeding a battlefield with this tricky little fire starter until she’d tested the antidote comprehensively. And though walking through the carefully penned, eye-searingly hot flames had worked for her at home, she was well aware that the fire she’d set in the runic circle in the yard had not been burning very hotly, say, as hotly as it did when consuming a Death Eater or three. And she very much wanted it to work without Order casualties.

Without anyone else going, that just didn’t fucking deserve it.

Gideon, him and Fabian… Lucius Malfoy had been there. Supposedly.

She couldn’t lay hands on him. But his house, his family’s fancy fucking house? The one that had sat, like a lovely shining thing on a hill, while he fired the homes of ordinary people in Bristol? The place he’d returned to, most likely, of an evening, after turning someone else’s small dream to ashes?

He could stand to lose that fucking house.

* * *

It went… well.

Not too well, of course, not with her shit luck. There were nights, and more nights, of creeping about dull dark Wiltshire with Mimsy shivering by her side, saying nothing, but practically vibrating with the remembered tension of every argument they’d had, every possible argument that could be raised against this.

_There could be patrols, Miss._ There weren’t, not really. There was one forlorn young fool, wandering a little far afield from the wilder edge of the whacking huge formal garden, but he never saw her. Too young– at least a couple years younger, maybe more– and no one she recognized from Hogwarts. Blonde in that insipid Malfoy way.

She didn’t have to be persuaded to let him alone, but she could feel Mimsy tiptoe closer as he meandered a ways ahead, as if Mimsy was steeling herself to intercede for him.

_The wards, Miss, the great houses are warded so very tight…_ And Malfoy Manor was heavily warded, that was true, but Lily had taken a little dram of the potion to Hogwarts, on an errand to speak to Pomfrey on the sly about appropriating some of the school’s treated yarrow root for some important project (for the Order, but she wasn’t supposed to mention that). And on the way back out, Lily had stopped on the edge of Hogsmeade, looked around, and gotten off the path.

She had been able to burn a small hole, very carefully, in the great cloak of magic that covered Hogwarts. She’d had the devil’s own time limiting the spread, but stamping out the fire had at least worked.

She had a letter made ready to be posted, on the eve of her death, if the firing of Malfoy Manor went wrong, or, more hopefully, if it went right, to Dumbledore, care of McGonagall. Explaining the little hole.

_The backlash,_ and Mimsy had taken a long, frightened breath, _Miss, it might kill you. It_ will _kill you._

That had been about the time that Mimsy had stopped asking permission to speak, and just taking it, shrilly.

_I don’t care,_ Lily had wanted to say, though it wasn’t really true. She wanted her death to mean more than just the smouldering ashes of some fancy fucking house, she wanted to cut a swathe, to _gut_ them the way she’d been gutted. To make them all sit down and shake a bit, wondering if this might be it, the end of the fight, the end of the war, the end of _something_.

“I will be,” she’d said then, and then again, just before she laid the first glistening trail of potion, “as careful as possible, I swear.” Probably, that was the only reason Mimsy had not hit her over the head and sat on her for a day or two, or locked her down in the cellar. Or perhaps told Sirius and Remus and Peter and everyone else in the Order, so they could do the same thing.

When the trail was laid– and wasn’t that a walk and a half– Lily had stepped delicately to the outside of the ellipse. Had taken a breath, several breaths, remembering how very wrong it all could go.

“Make sure you get all of them,” she’d said, to Mimsy. “The elves, at least.” And then, as had been requested, she wrapped the quivering elf in a long, long skein of clean bandaging, and cast some careful charms on her, making her look old and half-dead and frightening. Making her sound the same. “In you go.”

And in, Mimsy had gone.

The fire itself… Lily didn’t remember starting it. She’d looked out on the house, the Manor, the tall stately beauty of it, the vast, grey-green land, and then she’d wept, because razing it all to cinders would do nothing. Would simply wipe more beauty out of the world, rather than bringing it back, returning it to her.

_So be it,_ she’d thought, as fire roared around her, inside her, in the potion-drawn ellipse, and then within, within, within.

She’d had to sit, after a bit. The fight was too taxing.

She’d felt Mimsy inside, Mimsy that she had thoroughly dosed. She felt others, too– elves, perhaps, or people. Cold flowers in the midst of a raging, greedy warmth. A warmth she had forced.

The wards burned and burned and _burned_ and still stood, and so she stood too, and raised her hands and cut them with a thought, with that old hairdressing spell from Hogwarts, with hate in her heart and fire in her lungs and rage for all they had taken from her, envy for all they’d managed to keep, while they took and tortured and raped and killed. “Burn!” she might have screamed. “Damn you, burn!”

She didn’t remember what she’d said, not exactly, because by then, the wards were creaking, glowing beneath the strain, and then Mimsy was behind her, suddenly, Mimsy triumphant, and it was easy then, to walk the fire in.

And burn.

And _burn_.

She was giggling by the end. The rush, the power flowing, the blood she had spilled from her hands, from her palms, for days and days, and then boiled, and bagged, or bottled, and kept, and poured… it was happy to burn for her. Happy to consume.

Dark things burned, and screamed, and hated, and whispered. Other things just screamed. One particular thing lingered, and squirmed, and fought, weakly, as flame grew inside it. Told her she was making a mistake, she didn’t know, she was some stupid, thrashing mudblood filth, stop, wait, don’t–

She burned that too. Gladly. Squeezing, with a flaming circle within the great ellipse, with the fire of the magic of the soul of the death of this place she had burned, was burning, forever.

“Miss,” Mimsy had said, long after she was done. “Miss, we can’t stay, you must come, come away.”

Lily supposed she must have listened, must have agreed to something, because she remembered Mimsy’s small, shaking hand in hers, as she led her away, and popped them both home, when Lily made no attempt to Apparate.

* * *

For a while after, a day or two, at most, Lily was given round to be squarely in the dumps. She’d worried, uselessly, whether someone would somehow connect the burning of Malfoy Manor to her, so she’d made sure to be coming down with something a day or two before, as well, and then knocked together a Blanching Draught to gag on just before Remus insisted on coming through.

In the end, it was Remus and Caradoc both, Remus looking a bit more haggard than usual, Caradoc looking fierce. “You’ll want to sit tight,” Caradoc said. “There’s a whole bloody to-do going on that you’d do well to stay out of.”

“I still say it was the wards,” Remus muttered, in the way of someone who was sullen over having lost, repeatedly, some important argument. “We’ve had trouble, haven’t we, with fires, and not all the ones those bastards set–”

“Remus,” Caradoc said, repressively. Then turned back to the blinking Lily, and smiled, tightly. “Just the usual. You really shouldn’t worry.”

“But,” she said, struggling to her feet, “if it’s fire, if it’s that fire again, that spontaneous, glowy stuff–”

“You really, really needn’t get up.”

“But I’ve been brewing, a bit, and I thought– Mimsy! Mimsy, could you get the, um…?”

“Mimsy will get the blocker, if Mistress will sit,” was the very prim, very pointed answer. Mimsy having disapproved of pretty much all of this, and having very nearly not let Lily out of bed this morning, even though she only felt a little giddy, still. “Mimsy will fetch it right away.”

“See?” Lily said, hastily. “She’s er, she’s very stern, so you know I’ve not been overdoing it, you know she wouldn’t stand for… _thank_ you, Mimsy, thanks for getting it.”

Mimsy eyed her, and then bypassed her, in favour of handing the heavy copper drum to Remus, who sniffed it, tentatively, and tried not to frown.

“It is a bit whiffy,” Lily couldn’t help saying, apologetically. “But it should work as an internal fire barrier. I’ve tested it on, well, quite a variety, magical and strictly organic and–”

“Mistress has been testing the fire blocker a lot,” Mimsy muttered, as she dusted the mantel unnecessarily, scowling at the small fire below. “Nearly every day, she has tested it.”

“Not while I was _sick_ ,” Lily scrambled to say, not liking the considering way Caradoc was now looking at her. “Really, I’ve done nearly nothing at all these four days. I made up that stuff,” she said, waving at the drum Remus was holding, “weeks and weeks ago.” That last point was technically true, since she’d found that a rolling boil didn’t do much for the fire blocker, other than make it smell worse. “And I promise it doesn’t taste half as bad as it smells. A number one vial each should suit everyone for a day.”

“Fantastic,” Caradoc said, still eyeing her. “Don’t push yourself to start up anything else for at least the rest of the week, all right? All this constant stress, it can’t be good for you.”

“Mimsy will do what Mimsy can,” Mimsy muttered, now poking at the fire. “Mimsy is not certain Mistress will listen.”

“I’ll listen!” Lily said, wondering just when it had come to this, talking loudly to drown out a house elf, and still seeing that the people said house elf had been tattling to about you were more inclined to believe the elf. “Really! I, I promise, I swear on–” _my grave,_ she’d thought to say, only, if she was being really honest, she knew that if Mimsy had been one bit less pushy, one bit less nagging, she really might just have sat there in the ashes of Malfoy Manor, and let herself go up in flame. “I swear,” she finally said, “on my line.”

James’ line, really. The Evanses were hardly anything like one, anything like the thorny, century-spanning enterprise that had been the Potters. That, if James’ ring and the link with Mimsy were to be believed, that _were_ the Potters, continued by one ever-angry, ever-raging, thoroughly unsuitable muggleborn.

“I swear,” she said again, quietly, and that time, Caradoc nodded in response, as if blood had been shed, or magic had been laid on the line.

“See you Tuesday,” Caradoc said, as Remus cast a handful of Floo powder into the fire. “General meeting, probably at the Cobb.”

“See you,” Lily said, nodding, smiling. And of course, because that was just how her life was, she never saw him again, except as a waving, smiling picture in the _Prophet_ , below the Dearborns’ shell-shocked plea.

* * *

“I can’t do this,” Sirius said, wildly, at the second, much more serious general Order meeting. “Why are we waiting? What in blazing _fuck_ are we waiting for?”

“Sirius–”

“We know they’re all laired up at Dunwoody creek. We’ve had spotters go up and down the whole blasted valley for three fucking weeks!”

“Albus said–”

“Dumbledore,” Sirius said, surging to his feet, “can kiss my fucking arse!”

“For goodness’ sake,” McGonagall snapped, “you’re going to tear off and get yourself killed! We can’t afford–”

“Listen to her,” Peter was hissing, his hand on Sirius’ arm, his knuckles white with effort, with fear, “for once in your miserable life. Do you think–”

“–counted how many of them there were,” Elphias Doge, who’d been the one to bring up Dumbledore’s absence, rushed to say, his reedy voice rising to make itself heard over the others. “Just the wizards, alone, brought it to at least twenty, at _least_! We’d be thoroughly outnumbered!”

“And when the fuck,” Sirius said, “have we _not_ been outnumbered? When have we not been getting increasingly outnumbered every other fucking week?”

“You want a swan song, then,” Frank Longbottom said, nodding amicably. “We all trot off to Dunwoody creek, or valley, whichever, and we all get topped until the last man, or woman, waves a white flag and says we surrender.”

“I want,” Sirius said, through gritted teeth, “to do something. _Anything_. Caradoc–” and there, his voice broke, and Peter finally let go of him, because he was no longer straining to be off. “We all know,” he finally said, “that he’s gone.”

“And you want to follow him,” Frank said, his tone still amicable, his gaze cool. “You’ll be very useful, won’t you, running up and down the field with a death wish.”

“Frank,” Alice said, at the same time as McGonagall, and Diggle, because Sirius had begun to tremble with what could either be rage or grief.

“It has to be fucking said,” Frank snapped, even as Lily silently rose and went up to take Sirius’ arm, and half force, half lead him, back over to his seat. “We keep going around either putting out fires or pulling people out of them. Rarely have we struck and been successful.”

“But that’s because–”

“The Dark Lord,” Frank said, with the mocking twist most Aurors used when using that title, “is not invincible. We cannot keep going around thinking he’s untouchable, that he isn’t a man like us, a person that can be cut, that can bleed and fall and die. If he _is_ invincible, we’re in trouble, but regardless of however many protection charms and spells, and however many men he’s got stacked up in his borrowed house, we have a chance of hurting him, of inflicting real damage, if we come at him from a direction he does not expect.”

By then, a hushed silence had descended, people leaning forward in their chairs. Sirius, settled down now, was the only one staring off into space, his hand warm and weak and limp in Lily’s. Calloused, like James’ hand, but not nearly as warm.

“–don’t go at him or his in Dunwoody,” Frank was saying now. “Not right away. They’ve taken up Caradoc, yes, they’ve gone on firing houses in Manchester, and they’ve done that because they think it was us that got the Malfoys.”

Not the family itself, the family had been got out by their elves. Warned, the story went, by the ghost of Armand Malfoy himself, a harbinger of great peril. _Not_ an aspect Lily was ever going to share with Mimsy, not if she could help it. Mimsy was already dictatorial enough; imagine how much worse she’d get if she knew she’d had the presence to seem like a wizard’s ghost, instead of the ghost of said wizard’s elf.

“We know it wasn’t us,” Frank continued, “but they don’t know that. So they’ve got extra men, probably, on the main house. Probably, they’ve also got at least a little more presence, at their own houses, but his, well, his will necessarily be the most watched, if only on account of the hay the _Prophet_ could make, if we managed to set fire to his main establishment.

“So,” he said, leaning slightly forward, “it’s easy enough, isn’t it? We take another house. The Lestranges, the new couple, they’re not at Babingley, they’re, according to a friend at Gringotts, in a smaller place, well north of the Lestrange lands, somewhere near Thornham.”

“This friend, at Gringotts,” McGonagall said. “Someone you trust?”

“Someone I trust to have a very old, and very nasty grudge against the family,” Frank said. “Always changing bankers on the slightest whim, the Lestranges.”

“And when you say ‘take’ the house,” Diggle said, uneasily, “you mean…?”

“Level it,” Frank said, nodding. “Hopefully with the Lestranges within it.”

At that calmly uttered statement, the stuffy room came alive, with outrage, with whispers, with arguments. Sirius came alive too, his hands shaking, his dark gaze burning. “When do we leave?” he asked, his low growl barely louder than everything else. “Frank, when?”

“Within the hour,” Frank said, eyeing him from across the circle. “ _If_ you’re up to it.”

Which, of course, he was, white-faced and no longer shaking, no longer on the edge, when he had his promised vengeance close enough to breathe on.

Lily, on the other hand… “You’ll stay here,” Alice said, her eyes compassionate, her tone firm, “relaying communication and supplies, with Arabella and Elphias.” With a squib, and a wizard whose wand arm was firm enough when it came to shields and sinks and warding, but who couldn’t cast a curse on another person to save his own life. “All right?”

“Yes, of course,” Lily said, half-wishing there was some way she could winkle the Apparition coordinates from someone, someone who wouldn’t think that she might actually use them. She, for appearances’ sake, made them all down a vial of fire-blocker, and, because it was practical, kitted them all out with the most vital potions.

“No more walking into ominous fogs,” she said sharply, to the somewhat listless-looking Peter. “I’ve no idea how on earth you’re not still hacking up your lungs, but I want it to last, all right?”

Peter, for answer, gave her a smile that was half-grimace, and strode off back over to Sirius. Sirius, whose hand she’d pressed, hard, because she couldn’t think of anything she could say that might actually get through to him.

* * *

The hastily-arranged raid was, if not an unvarnished success, an invigorating one, to the Order’s general spirit. More than just the Lestranges were there, in their apparently quite fashionably overhauled cottage; the lazily written post-mission report mentioned a veritable swarm of Death Eaters, five, or perhaps seven, not including the Lestranges themselves. Injured, generally, and definitely injured _before_ Frank and company got there and started laying down curses.

It was explained, afterwards, once a somewhat loopy Dedalus Diggle had been carted off to Mungo’s by his scowling wife, to have his arm reattached. Frank– grazed, grey with dust, but smiling– explained that he might have forgot to mention the fact that he and Alice had known that Moody was hitting another major camp today, not the Dunwoody one, but major enough to hurt.

“Didn’t know exactly when it’d come off,” Alice said, as she began wiping down her blood-spattered hands with a wet cloth. “Think we got quite lucky, actually, roping in a few of the limpers, when all we really wanted was for them to come home to dust.”

“And you’re sure,” McGonagall said, a little less warily than she had before, in the arguments before they’d left, “you’re positive the Ministry won’t…?”

“Mad-Eye will be upset that we ruined this month’s arrest log,” Frank said, shrugging. “He’ll probably push, when I try to go back in, for probation or some such, for me.”

“Not me, though,” Alice said, smirking. “Everyone knows I’m led by my husband. Joined the Aurors _just_ for him.”

“What she means,” Frank said, “is that Mad-Eye will _try_ for probation for her as well, but you know Whitby’ll nix it. A mother’s devotion, a mother’s feelings, and we did get Yaxley, who was all the, er…”

“Yep,” Alice said. Which was how you knew that she’d been the one to do the killing of Yaxley, whose rich family and eagle-eyed lawyers had forever excused him of the many crimes he’d wrought on young men and women– young muggles, mostly, these last two years, which made him even harder to pin down. “Mad-Eye’s going to give us a good, long bollocking.”

No one mentioned Dumbledore, who’d been incommunicado all day, having apologized, via Patronus, for not being able to be on hand. It was expected, of course, that whatever disappointed rant they received from Mad-Eye would be eclipsed by the sheer power of Dumbledore’s long sighs and crisply disapproving words, but no one seemed to dread the occurrence of either.

They’d all got out, even Sirius. Who Frank had sent back a quarter-hour earlier than the others, grey-faced and ranting and bleeding in a dozen different places. Who was now back to silent numbness, in the chair in the corner, ignoring Peter’s stammered chiding about how he’d better go home now, how surely he had to sleep at some point…

“I’ll sleep here,” was all Sirius said, so Lily rolled her eyes and called, with a careful tug of the bond, for Mimsy.

“Mimsy,” she said, when the elf popped in, “take Sirius to the house, and sit on him if he tries anything.”

“What–”

“Yes, Mistress!” And Sirius was gone with a low, hoarse rumble of protest, and the usual quiet pop.

“I’ll sort him,” Lily said, to the slightly shocked room, being careful to sound just a little wry about it. “Send me word, Frank, Alice, when you need him back.”


	5. grey morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late again >.>. Though now I'm wondering if I've always been posting this on the cusp of Wednesday, and just forgotten it. Warning again for character death, and for brief flashbacks to chapter 2.

## grey morning

Two weeks passed, with Sirius there in what was now just Lily’s house. He didn’t require much mothering, though she’d expected him to, after she went home exhausted, only to find that he was sitting at the kitchen table, and had been sitting there for the two hours it had taken for her to check over everyone that one last time, just in case she’d missed something serious.

“Hello,” she’d said to him, awkwardly, only to have him burst into tears. Sirius cried and cried, in great, desperate gulps, apologizing incoherently for everything from the fact that he was dampening her table (“’ts good wood, I know, me and James nicked it”) to the fact that he’d nearly killed her that one time (“fucking trying to be flashy, _again_ , when I should’ve…”), and then, at the end, bringing up the fact that he’d always been jealous of her and James.

“It’s alright,” she’d said, to that bit, as he shook across from her, his tears dripping onto their clasped hands. “He was your friend first.”

Only that hadn’t gone over so well.

“I didn’t,” Sirius had said, his voice so shaky she’d barely understood it, “I wanted, I always wanted more than that from him… I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry…” She’d stared at him, shocked, not sure she was really understanding him. “And then… with Caradoc, I thought, I knew it couldn’t last, but I still thought…”

“Oh, god,” Lily had said. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

She’d cried then, too, from watching him, from knowing just how he felt. How even if he’d known whatever he had with Caradoc mightn’t last, he’d wanted to keep it going that little bit longer.

After, when the tears had dried up, she’d got up and went across and hugged and kissed him, because he looked like he needed it. Simple and friendly and careful at first, on his cheek, and then, suddenly, because the urge had come upon her, right on the mouth.

He’d kissed her back, desperately, and kissed her all the way up the stairs, and into the bedroom, and into the bed, and then said, “it’s not really working, is it?” Because it really wasn’t.

Funny, funny enough that she’d cracked up, tearily, at Sirius’ thoughtful frown.

She hadn’t been able, quite, to make him smile, not even with her terrible joke about how he now knew who’d have been wearing the pants, so to speak, if he and James had ever got into it. Sirius had nodded, half hearing her, and had drifted off to sleep on her side of the bed, his face half-smothered in her pillow, seeking, perhaps, a scent that they both knew was no longer there.

So, well, Lily worried about him, and planned to stick to a firmer daily routine, so as to have a ready-made excuse to check on him now and then. But, after that first teary day, Sirius had got out of bed and showered and come down for breakfast and then gone off to Auror training– training he’d only this year gotten serious about completing.

Then he had come home at a reasonable hour, and not been more than a little tipsy, and he’d stayed in the kitchen and eaten dinner and asked about her day. And then had come up to bed to sleep alongside her, still on her side of the bed, though she’d already told him, half-joking, that he’d stolen the warmer half from her.

“I’m not alright,” Sirius said, halfway during the second week, “but I do know how to cope.” His steady gaze had dared her to question him, dared her to start an argument that would very naturally mean bringing up the constant, near-exhausting brewing she was still engaging in.

So Lily nodded and smiled and told herself she had to be a little less openly worried about him. And that she really had to stop trying to finish two batches of the fire starter every day, because it was starting to take a physical toll, and probably not doing very much for the potion’s final efficacy.

An efficacy that she was by now quite, quite proud of. She was careful only to test it when Sirius wasn’t around, half to keep from alarming him, half to keep postponing the eventual conversation they would need to have about his being made aware, as an officer-in-training of the DMLE, that she was knowingly brewing a Class 5 Controlled Invention (Potion, Unguent or Solvent With Destructive Capability Upon Will-Based Activation) that was deliberately unregistered with the Ministry.

Someday, they’d have to have that talk, and the accompanying alarming demonstration, if only so she could possibly enlist him as a quiet conspirator in burning down his own ancestral home.

He’d been all for doing just that, loudly, while Malfoy Manor had still been a topic for discussion. He’d sighed over the fact that the unknown arsonist had bothered giving out a warning that enabled the family to flee, something that he thought they should most definitely dispense with if they chanced to pay a similar visit to Grimmauld Place.

Everyone had either rolled their eyes or ignored him, being well used to hearing Sirius Black go on about his family in that bitter, half-joking fashion now and then. Lily, though, had watched him out of the corner of her eye, and begun to think how she might go about raising the topic of precisely where the house was, without giving anything away to him.

Then, three days later, on the eve of another interminable meeting with her lawyers, one that Mr. Merrywood had promised her was the very last one before the final reading of James’ will, all of Lily’s vengeful brewing was made suddenly, shockingly moot.

Not because another ancestral house went up in flames, though the _Prophet’s_ tremulous hand-wringing made out that the firing of Longbottom Lodge was the beginning of the end, the start to an irreparable slide into utter disorder. But because, a day and a half after the prudently empty shell of the Lodge began smouldering sullenly beneath the Dark Mark, Alice and Frank had been hit at their safe house in Derbyshire.

They’d only just decamped there a week ago, too, after word had come down that Voldemort had most definitely taken offence at the slim success they’d engineered on their half of the two-pronged raid they had led in early September. Alice had rolled her eyes at the necessity of it, but she’d said, a little seriously, that perhaps it might be time that they all started switching locations.

_We certainly won’t be in Derbyshire for long,_ she’d said. _Not sensible, not to keep moving. It is working for Bagnold, still…_

Lily, hearing the news, sat down abruptly. She very nearly didn’t hear the rest of it.

“…corpse,” Sirius was saying, excitedly, a feverish colour in his normally pale face. “We found his _fucking_ – you’re not, are you not listening, Lily? He’s dead, Voldemort’s dead!”

“Don’t say the name,” she snapped at him, flinching instinctively. Then, realizing what else he’d just said, she looked up at him, through eyes that had already been tearing up, half in rage, half in bitter sorrow. “What?”

He was dead. _He_ was dead. Sirius described his body, the body, the handsome, waxy shell of him that had been found in the safe house, half-crumpled beside Neville’s crib, his face blank with shock. His body empty.

“Dead,” was repeated, again and again and again.

“But Alice?” Lily said, cutting into the litany. “Alice and Frank, and, and Neville?”

Sirius’ fevered joy subsided, as she’d half expected it to. As she had been dreading. “Neville is alright,” he said, roughly. “Mungo’s, with dehydration and some sort of scarring, but he’s alright, really. Alice– she’s, she’s responsive, she’s just not doing well. Because of Frank.”

Which meant… “He didn’t make it,” Lily murmured. “He didn’t fucking make it.”

“Not because, not necessarily because You-Know-Who…” Sirius said, gesturing meaningfully, even as he slowed his restless pacing. “It was a traditional, it was a cut you can only, it’d have to have been Frank, doing it. Going out on his own terms.”

“Is Alice at Mungo’s as well?” Lily was already forcing herself to her feet, summoning her coat, her robes. “Is she…?”

“The Longbottoms will be there with her by now,” Sirius said, warningly. By which he meant that Augusta Longbottom, having flooed straight to Mungo’s from Overton Keep, would be there storming up and down and haranguing everyone, while very visibly wishing she could take over whatever tasks the Healers were dawdling at. As for the Fawcetts, well, Alice hadn’t been a daughter of the main, pureblood branch, and her mother had removed precipitously to France in Alice’s last year at Hogwarts, soon after her father, a Hit Wizard, had been surprised on the job by elements as yet unknown.

There wouldn’t immediately be anyone there, not specifically for Alice, no one that could easily afford to miss work while lingering by her side. So Lily kicked out of her jeans and scrambled into tights and a robe, then swaddled up and flooed over to the Hawley house to make the connection to Mungo’s, only to find that the house was, rather than nearly empty, packed to the gills with drinking, crying, merrily quarrelling people.

She spotted Remus standing near a knot of frightened, dirty, unwell-looking people, looking nowhere near as grim as he usually did when encountering obvious refugees. “Picked them up at Dunwoody,” he said, when she took him aside to ask what the bloody hell was going on. “The place– look, even though I hadn’t heard about Frank and Alice, I knew there was something on. It was a madhouse, for a moment, and then they were all just taking off, and–”

“Is he really dead?” a shortish, dark-skinned woman asked, one of the frightened lot. “The Dark Lord?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, for he was suddenly there, just flooed in, looking a cross between triumphant and concerned. “The price was high, but yes. Voldemort is dead.”

Deafening cheers filled the room, along with weeping, with exclamations of surprise and relief crowding in on Lily from all sides.

_The price,_ Dumbledore had said, as if– as if Frank had known, somehow, that whatever vengeance curse he’d cast would actually find its mark. As if it mightn’t have been tried before, as if people hadn’t mostly kept their heads down because nothing, _nothing_ worked, and Lord Voldemort walking into your living room was basically your death sentence, if he hadn’t been deliberately invited over.

_The price,_ Lily thought, bitterly, and had to smile and elbow her way to the fireplace, because if she stayed in that room one moment more, she would scream until the walls fell in on her, scream until they all burned. “St. Mungo’s!” she called out, and stepped gladly into the flames.

* * *

It wasn’t until she was hurrying down the hallway for private rooms on the fifth floor that Lily remembered how it had been, the last time she’d been here.

Not for James. For Neville, useless as that had felt. She’d stood awkwardly outside the delivery room, while Alice cursed and screamed and snapped at everyone in a way that was only just audible through the worn-down silencing ward. Lily had been there because of Sirius’ urging, and Frank’s blunt, galvanizing worry that none of Alice’s friends might be able to be there.

It had been a lie, but only narrowly so. A Mrs. Hardy had come by, sometime during the first stretch, to hug Alice and present her with the traditional pewter ring, and weep because she didn’t dare stay. A Ms. Carning that never showed had been the only other unfamiliar name on the approved visitor list, which Lily had filched at one point, bored and terrified and terrifically resentful.

So, in the end, Lily had gone in, all stiff, careful smiles, trying not to resent the strained, pained contentment of Alice and Frank and their new, squalling heir. Who she had held, and envied them for having, and handed over to Sirius and then felt suddenly weightless, suddenly relieved.

_If I had someone to take care of,_ she remembered thinking, _it’d be ever so irresponsible of me to go on being out for blood._

Somehow, she could not escape that thought just now. Could not escape remembering how it had felt, to look on the celebration of your friends, and feel nothing but distant gladness, a gladness that did not come close to touching the centre of your rage.

That rage was in Alice, now. It lived in her too-still hands, in her listless, flat expression. In the way she seemed well able to hear Augusta Longbottom’s helpless, sharp-toned fussing about this and that, and yet showed no reaction to it.

“Lily,” was the only response to Lily’s entrance. “You came.”

“Alice,” Lily said, and carefully took the second, empty seat to Augusta’s left.

Something like an hour came and went. Augusta accepted Neville from a harried-looking Healer that pronounced the facial scarring as diminished as it was going to get, and then scarpered before Augusta could so much as open her mouth in admonishment.

“The nerve!” she said. “The utter nerve!” And went stalking out after them, having thrust Neville into Lily’s arms with a mutter to keep an eye on him, won’t you, just for a moment.

The door shut, and some awful, animating force returned to Alice’s face. “Lily,” she said, her voice tremulous, and somehow rusty. “Did you hear. About–”

“The Dark Lord?” Lily said. “The very _dead_ Dark Lord?”

Alice closed her eyes. “No,” she said, almost dismissively. “No, I mean Peter.”

Lily blinked. “Peter?” She paused to think. “He wasn’t at Hawley, but–”

“No, he wouldn’t’ve been at fucking Hawley house,” Alice said, her hands curling into pale, shaking fists. “He was at mine. At _mine_.”

Lily heard her, heard the emphasis, but couldn’t process it. Could not believe it. “What–”

“He brought Voldemort there,” Alice said, through gritted teeth. “He– he watched, while that, that bastard, while he went at me and Frank.”

“Peter? _Peter_ was there, was watching…?”

“Yes,” Alice said, shaking, now. “I told them–”

“But no one’s mentioned–”

“–and they all said it was the Imperius, but I know it’s not, I know what I saw, he just _watched_ , Lily, and then he stopped, he looked away like he couldn’t bear it, but he didn’t try, he didn’t. He didn’t try a single fucking thing to stop it.” Alice, dry-eyed, shaking, took hard hold of Lily’s extended hand. “If you see him…”

“Yes,” Lily said, her low, hard tone a promise. “Definitely.” She made herself a mental note to swing home and brew some Veritaserum, something that’d take only a few hours since she had the pre-aged base and the activator ready-made. “Anything else?”

Alice’s face crumpled, a little, then firmed. “Just that,” she said, in a near whisper. “Just that.”

She didn’t cry, not properly, until the same frazzled Healer that had shown in Lily earlier knocked at the door, asking if Mrs. Longbottom would like her to either allow or turn away a Ms. Carning.

“Let her in,” Alice had called out, her voice frantic as she sat up fully, trying weakly to lever herself out of bed. “My god, if it’s Letty…”

It apparently was. The whey-faced young woman that was shown in some moments later went still in the doorway, still and shaking. “I didn’t,” she said. “I should’ve come, when…”

“Letty,” Alice said, and broke down in her friend’s arms, weeping like nothing would ever be right again. “Letty, I can’t bear it, I can’t.”

Lily sat there, awkwardly, jiggling Neville in her arms a bit, Neville that she’d have thought was being worryingly silent, if the Healer that had handed him off to Augusta earlier on hadn’t said he was on a drop or two of infant-strength Calming Potion. Eventually, Augusta came bustling back into the room and relieved Lily of Neville, and so she got up and went to stand around just outside for a moment or two, sharing a strained silence with Frank Longbottom, Senior. Who looked, if not utterly destroyed, at least a good ways toward it, his starched, crisp robes and fine gloves a clear contrast to his red-rimmed eyes, fisted, shaking hands and hollow expression.

“I knew,” he said, at length, in a low, hoarse voice, “I knew that girl would be the death of my boy, someday.” And then, as Lily stood there wide-eyed, scrambling for something to say in response, the old man sighed and turned away, and began walking off down the hallway in that painfully familiar, ground-eating stride that was quintessential Frank.

_Didn’t precisely approve, my father,_ Frank had said, once, over drinks, discussing the reason why he and Alice had stayed in the trainee flats for a lot longer than they’d liked. _Mother picking at him over it only made it all worse, glory this and duty that…_

He had been torn between the Aurors and the Unspeakables, had been leaning toward the latter as the less dangerous option, if nothing like the safe, cushy post his father had much rather preferred that he take in the Department of Magical Transportation if he insisted on working at all. Then, during the general orientation, he had seen Alice Fawcett in line for the Aurors, and then of course he had gone over to talk to her, and had somehow found himself signing the Trainees’ charter alongside her.

_Oh, yes, ‘somehow’,_ Alice had said, rolling her eyes expressively. _Have you noticed, yet, that I’m always his excuse?_

Lily was alone now, ignored by the few passers-by, Healers en route to some pressing emergency, people hurrying to get in to see someone. No one stopped to stare at her, to marvel as she lowered her head and let slip a few, bitter tears, though she felt immensely self-conscious as she let them fall.

_You didn’t even know him that well,_ she half expected someone to come barrelling up and say. Because, outside of the raids, the missions, the swearing as they cast together, or cast near each other, and the way she’d known Frank detested Skele-gro, and could put away nearly half a roast if you were stupid enough to let him alone with it… She hadn’t really known him at all.

It wasn’t surprising, though, that he’d gone out the way he had, that he’d let himself trust to bloody vengeance, to the kind of blood magic that she was sure the Ministry had made a punishable offence under the Feuds Act of… what was it, 1820? 1825? Purebloods, in Lily’s experience, were very publicly inflexible, but a worrying amount of their rules and morals seemed to go entirely ignored in private, among family or friends. They were, in short, the kind of people who’d lobby en masse to pass the Feuds Act and then go on to pass down, between generations, the intricate specificities of how one might go about casting the sorts of nasty blood curses the Feuds Act had banned, just in case.

Even if Lord Voldemort had only been some jumped-up halfblood pretender, his death might mean trouble with the more ancient side of his family, the sort of trouble that only went away after years of covert, lethal sniping and perhaps an unwelcome marriage. Which the Longbottoms had to worry about, now, on top of reprisals from enraged Death Eaters.

And, speaking of Death Eaters…

“Peter,” Lily muttered to herself, with a shiver. She wished she knew where Sirius had heard the news of the hit from, wished she’d thought to ask if he had perhaps been on the scene immediately. That he’d swarmed in once the news of Voldemort’s corpse got out, along with half the DMLE, that she could believe; what she couldn’t believe was him hearing about Peter having been there, and somehow not repeating it, not saying even a word about it.

The problem was, she knew, or could easily imagine, that the first Auror team in on the ground had assumed that Alice was being hysterical, and that Peter, like some other unlucky friends of important targets, had been caught and forced, and had broken and then run off to deal with the guilt. She could even imagine why Alice, in a horribly high-stress situation, might have failed to notice _some_ inconsistency, something that absolved Peter, especially if his first reaction to Voldemort keeling over had been to run.

But he hadn’t run to Hawley. Hadn’t run to Sirius, or Remus. Lily recalled that Peter and Remus had been sharing a flat at some point, but she wasn’t sure that was true now, with Remus always off scouting.

_His mother’s house,_ Lily thought, suddenly, thinking of how Peter was always muttering about not being able to pop round as often as he liked. Then again, if he knew they were looking for him, that’d be the last place he’d go, wouldn’t it?

“Stop stalling,” Lily admonished herself, with a shake. The fact that she didn’t want to head home at precisely this moment, just because Peter had helped ward her house, didn’t mean she needed to keep hanging about here in the hallway, brooding, unneeded and unnoticed. “Get on with you.”

* * *

The Hawley house was mostly emptied by the time she went back through it. Remus and his rescuees and Sirius, who’d followed her through the Floo, landing just before Dumbledore, all of them were nowhere to be seen. Lily stopped a moment, anyway, to talk with Arabella and Sturgis Podmore, who listened, their faces falling, as she told them what Alice had said.

“I don’t,” Arabella finally said, “I don’t _want_ to believe it, but…”

“That he hasn’t shown up,” Lily said, shaking her head, “and that he didn’t stick around, after, when Voldemort fell, it’s not, well. It’s just not a good sign, is it?”

“But,” Podmore said, “how long…? If he wasn’t being controlled, just how long has it gone on?”

“I’m going home to knock up some Veritaserum,” Lily said. “When we find him, we’re going to bloody well find it all out.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Arabella said, sternly. “Go on with her, Podmore, I’ll be all right here; Diggle’s due back in a minute.”

They ended up waiting until Dedalus and his wife and the frowning, disbelieving McGonagall had either flooed in (the Diggles) or been summoned (McGonagall). Then Lily and McGonagall had flooed back to Lily’s in grim, alert silence, and combed the house from top to bottom with Mimsy’s tremulous, hand-wringing aid.

With the house and garden reluctantly declared to be definitively Peter-free, Lily had set herself to starting the brew, or, more correctly, the careful combination. Putting together a viable batch of Veritaserum when starting from the less-restricted base potions was always a bit of a gamble; one step wrong, and you ended up with a clear liquid that tasted of grapes and compelled the drinker to tell fabulous lies. Which was fun at parties, but not very useful when you wanted to know why a trusted friend of your dead husband had betrayed another friend to the death.

She carefully did not think at all of how Peter never, ever stopped talking. How he had been the one, in James’ room, at James’ deathbed, to tell her that vengeance on Gabriel Wilkes was beyond her. How he’d usually always been the one to crack, first, if she wanted to know something.

If–

She would not think of ifs. That way lay madness, and worse, mistakes. She had a little more of both bases left, but she didn’t want to have to use them all up.

Now, there. It was cooling, and a very tentative, careful taste of one drop showed her that she hadn’t botched it, that she wouldn’t have to start again. “Mimsy?”

“Yes, Mistress?”

“I’m out of the number twos again. Could you maybe–”

The wards. That was the wards. Not shrieking at her, not precisely, just pressing, or perhaps being pressed. Someone was on the edge of them.

“Mistress?”

“Hold the house,” Lily said, shortly, filling her robe pockets with a sac each. She’d not bothered taking any with her to Mungo’s, reasoning that if she found she needed such firepower there, she’d be better served by either running like mad, or giving up and expiring on the spot. Because if St. Mungo’s was no longer safe from Death Eaters even after Voldemort’s demise, then nowhere else would be.

Such as her house. Such as her carefully warded, Unplottable house, warded just as tight as the Longbottoms’ safe house had likely been. Tighter, now, once McGonagall had left, due to a quick trip to her ingredients cupboard, and a liberal hand with just over half the vial she had of Peter’s blood, which she had taken months ago, surreptitiously, in case of a very different situation to the one she was facing now.

She told herself, as she crept up the stairs that led to the living room, that her hasty extra ward would hold. Reminded herself that it _had_ been Voldemort, at Frank and Alice’s house. No ward was proof against him, not for long enough that there was any point in setting them up without also putting in place an emergency escape route or two.

The second of which Lily was using now, going through the kitchen, crouching low, and then to the back door, which led out into the kitchen garden. The garden was hedged by tall bushes and heavily shadowed on the back end by trees that went some way out, joining the deceptively sparse-looking forest that ran along the back of the property, all the way into the village. Not the best odds for making it away from a properly planned attack, the kind of attack that would put someone at the back of the house, or, failing that, at the most obvious place a desperate muggleborn would head for if they wished to hide.

Which meant, presently, avoiding the garden shed, and the shade of the plants nearby it. Which meant she came up on the edge of the garden, the place where it and the wards ended and the forest began, and she saw, like in a dream, from the best possible angle, that there was a black-robed person lying fallen behind the nearest oak tree. A Death Eater, from the tell-tale sheen the midday sun cast on their heavy robes.

“ _Stupefy,_ ” Lily cast, with only a thought, and ended up frowning and looking around herself again and again when the way the person was lying sprawled atop the grass didn’t change. “ _Homenum revelio._ ”

The spell reached out, combing the grounds first, passing over the fallen, breathing body, and then Mimsy’s familiar presence. Straining, Lily widened its reach to almost half a mile, and still she found nothing. Finally, she let the spell go, forcing herself to approach, to come just close enough to the Death Eater that she would clearly be able to see their face when another, whispered spell turned them toward her.

She couldn’t help but boggle at the sight of them. “Evan Rosier?” she whispered. “Of all the people I could stumble on at the edge of my fucking property, I get _Rosier_?”

Shaking her head, she made a swift, thorough circuit of the grounds. She tried not to stare at the prone body of Rosier when she came back around to where he lay, but it was utterly impossible. As she watched him, she could see, now, what she hadn’t noticed initially; his chest moved slightly, with each sleepy inhalation. Mocking her stifled, very nearly unconscious worry that her instinctive stunner had somehow finished him.

He was alive, then. For now.

_Do it,_ she told herself. _Do it, or don’t._ And, after one more frozen moment of indecision, she floated him up off the ground, using her steadiest, most careful touch, checking him for obvious breaks and bleeding. When she found nothing that required rushing him off to Mungo’s, she let out a weary sigh, pocketing the wand she’d found in his sleeve. Then guided his floating body into the house, through the back door, around the corner, and down to her potions lab.

She’d locked away his wand, cleared the least crowded table (the smaller one), settled him down on it and started unfastening his robes before she realized that she was touching him, had been touching him the whole time, without thinking. Without remembering that the very last thing he’d done was get on top of her and wank himself dry, spilling his hot seed onto her forcibly bared skin as he told her it was necessary, regrettably so.

“Mistress?” Mimsy said, from behind her. “Is there something…?”

Lily scrubbed at her eyes, realized she was over in the corner, that she hadn’t even been crying, just hyperventilating and holding on to the edge of the non-cleared table so hard that it left indents in her palms. Which she had to shake the tingles out of, first, before she could trust herself to say anything calmly. “It’s… I’ve a Death Eater, over there. A Death Eater.”

Mimsy, scowling, went over to the table. Poked at Rosier’s half-bared form, tugging both his sleeves up, peering closely at his skin. “His mark is faded, Miss. Faded to a rubbing, almost.”

“That’s not– he’s a _Death Eater_ , it’s not like he, like just because his master’s dead, he’ll go along skipping down the lane, friendly to all comers, only killing on Saturdays!” She was hyperventilating again; she tried to stop it, tried to breathe more slowly, but it was as if her body had been seized by fear, by anger, by the purest, bitterest form of betrayal, and it wouldn’t let her go unless she took radical action. “He can’t be here.”

“So,” Mimsy said, matter-of-factly, “Miss is wanting me to Floo the Ministry, or fetch Mister Sirius?”

“No!” Lily clapped her hand over her mouth, but could not bring herself to rescind the order. “No, no Ministry.”

“Then,” came the tentative answer, “Miss will be burning him?”

The thought of that beckoned, seductively, though she knew it’d hurt, and not just because the fires she called from her potion always hurt. “I can’t,” she found herself saying, into her hand. “I can’t.”

Mimsy inched back over to her side. Touched her, carefully, on the knee. “If Miss cannot,” she muttered, while looking fixedly at Rosier’s insensate body. “If Miss asks–”

“No,” Lily said, moving her hand up to her eyes, to scrub away the sudden, betraying wetness there. She’d cried enough today, for someone who deserved it; she would not cry for anyone else. She _wouldn’t_. “If it needs doing, I should do it.” And then, as an awkward silence stretched, she made herself add, “I have to talk to him, first.”

Which was a lie, of course. She didn’t have to do anything, didn’t owe him more than a checkup and a speedy, careful deliverance into Auror custody. But she couldn’t bring herself to phrase the truth, to put into words the desperate, vengeful yearning she felt at the thought of prying words from Evan, of being opposite Evan as he woke, bound and potioned and helpless. Helpless to do anything but what she wanted; helpless to do anything but speak whatever truth Veritaserum could twist up out of him.

If, that is, he wasn’t proof against it. Which felt almost guaranteed, for a man who could say he served the Dark Lord in one breath, and then turn around and murder the Death Eaters he’d led in that service. And then go back to his lord, and spin his tale so well that he was alive and hale enough to turn up in Lily’s back garden today, some few hours after his lord had perished.

_Like a bad penny,_ Lily thought, as she forced herself back over to his side, to finish the closer medical check that her fit of panic had interrupted. _He found me before; I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that he’s still got it, that he’s still got the fucking knack of turning up where he shouldn’t be._

Knack or no, despite his silver tongue and all his devil’s luck, Evan Rosier looked ill. Not strikingly so, not so that you’d notice it were he up and smiling and jawing at you, the energy that drove him fully manifest. Flat on his back, asleep, Evan looked young and thin, as thin as his solid, sturdy build could get without looking skeletal. His skin was sallow, his hair was dull, his face was lined, and he was frowning even in his sleep, which he looked like he desperately needed, what with the faint shadows beneath his eyes.

His scars…

Lily had never seen him this thoroughly undressed, not even back when they’d both been fooling themselves, fucking in school closets, twining together in empty classrooms. But she’d become familiar, over time, with the feel of the faint, raised lines on his back, his arse, his thighs. The weird ridge on his hip, the raised pattern in the small of his back. She’d never asked what she was touching, what history lay behind those marks, but she’d noticed how he held a little more still when she touched them, clearly expecting to be questioned.

To be contrary, she had touched, and touched, and looked at him and never asked, not even with the slightest glance.

She wished… she didn’t know what she wished. _He wouldn’t have listened,_ she told herself, now, not allowing herself to touch, just looking and feeling sick. But she still wished she’d said something, said something about how it wasn’t normal, that parents didn’t generally lay into the children they loved like that. Something to make him feel like he could talk about it with her, the way Severus had very occasionally done, in low, flat, faraway tones, about his dad.

She’d understood, even then, that the source of all that scarring had to have been one of Evan’s parents. That he wouldn’t have tolerated such lasting hurt coming from anyone else. That he’d gotten the scars from people he couldn’t retaliate against, people with a great deal of power over him. Which was part of why she had said nothing, had only touched him and kept silent.

Not all of the scars were old. There was one near the base of his throat that she didn’t recognize, and another, slightly raw-looking one winding around his right arm, and there were thick white lines on the backs of his hands that she didn’t know what to make of. The first two could be duelling scars, grazes, spells he hadn’t dodged, but the scarring on his hands…

“Salve, please,” she muttered, and Mimsy crept up and handed her the jar, which Lily took and opened and applied to Evan’s right arm, carefully. All while trying not to think about how he’d got such vicious scars on the backs of his hands, or about how long he’d have to have waited to have the injuries healed, that they would scar so terribly.

It had to have been Voldemort. She just couldn’t think of anyone else that would have hurt him that way, deliberately, and then made him go unhealed. Few of his older scars were that ugly, or placed so very visibly.

_Bastard,_ she thought, of Voldemort, of the man that had so thoroughly conquered Evan, that he could mark him and wound his hands and make him do terrible things, and still have him there, ready to fall at his feet and call him lord. _I do it so I don’t die horribly,_ Evan had told her, months and months ago, and he had meant it, had been too afraid, too worried to risk anything but obedience even though he knew its cost.

She had always been unsure, from the moment he’d held her, forcing her to swear to keep his dubious secret, if there had really been any secret at all. It had not escaped her, in those years at school, that Evan Rosier was almost frighteningly perceptive, that he was always watching, that he craved knowledge of what other people thought of him. That he always preferred to deal with the world by taking control of his surroundings in the most reliable way he knew: provoking everyone around him, forcing them to react to his erratic behaviour in an obvious, predictable fashion.

Lily had liked to be unpredictable to spite him. To assert her own control, to take away a little bit from that terrible certainty he sometimes wore. And yet, despite everything, despite knowing that he didn’t always sound that frighteningly certain because he actually felt it, when he’d whispered that he was a Seer, she’d believed him absolutely, just for a moment. Much like the foolish, helpless way she’d believed him when he said, just before they parted at school, that he would always be hers.

Looking at him now, at his scarred, sleeping body, his faded mark, his bruised, sallow skin, the last thing she wanted was to believe he had somehow seen this, experienced this, predicting every hurt he had been forced to accept. If he _was_ a Seer– if he hadn’t just decided to imagine it, to conjure some sort of control over his miserable life, some sort of fortifying reason for making awful choices–

“Miss?” Mimsy nudged her. “Is the salve all he will be needing?”

Lily shook herself. “Sorry,” she muttered, cleaning her hands with a half-thought charm, then closing the jar of salve and handing it back. “Probably,” she said, “probably, he just needs a bit of Strengthening Solution.” Which she could spare, now, if not in buckets; the ingredient shortage would ease soon, surely, without the constant attacks on ports and on shipments. “Mimsy? Be a dear and fetch me down some, will you, while I watch him?”

“If Mistress is really sure,” was the nearly scandalized answer. Mimsy, after having taken title to the garden, had become, if it was possible, even more fanatical about ingredient wastage than Lily had gotten, these last few months. All-heal salve was fairly cheap to make up, with many substitutes for its component parts, but Strengthening Solution ate up yarrow root in fistfuls, and Mimsy had only just started a batch of the latter properly drying. “Mistress could always send him to Mungo’s for potioning.”

“No,” Evan said, hoarsely, just as Lily had turned around to give Mimsy a quelling look. “No Mungo’s for me, Lady Potter, if you would be so kind.” And then he tried to sit up, shaking with effort as he did so, while Lily spun around again and stared at him, mouth open, no intelligible words coming to her. “You needn’t– that is,” and he coughed, not at all romantically, much the same distressing, hacking way Peter had used to cough. “I am sure– your hospitality–”

“Lie down,” Lily said, through gritted teeth. “Lie the fuck down, and shut up.”

She didn’t know which of them was more surprised when he did as she’d ordered, his arms trembling, his brow wrinkled. “Um,” he said, after a moment, because of course he couldn’t obey entirely. “You, er. You really did cut your hair.”

He sounded more thoughtful than plaintive, but still. Lily advanced a step toward him, and was pleased to see his shoulders tense, and his wand hand twitch. “If you wanted my hair long,” she said, evenly, “you should’ve stuck around and kept your friends from cursing it.”

“Yes,” he said, without quite looking at her. “True, that.” A brief, thick silence ensued, and then he shifted in place, as if he’d just become aware of his mostly bared skin, of his thorough exposure to her. He glanced up at her, and then away. “You could– you really should hand me in. You don’t–”

“Shut up,” Lily said, pleasantly, and felt a hot rush of satisfaction when he went still. “If he moves, Mimsy, feel free to sit on him, hard.”

Evan looked up at her again, his brow creased, his brown gaze calculating, his lips twitching in the strained beginnings of that familiar smile. “Being sat on, I assume, is a euphemism for something rather unpleasant…?”

Lily just looked back at him and smiled, thinking of those few, productive days she’d put into making sure Mimsy didn’t have to worry too much about any wizards she might encounter in Malfoy Manor, while warning all the elves. Rushes of air, big bangs and so forth, had proved just a little too taxing, but static electricity was really quite easy for her to channel.

Mimsy had wrung her hands and sobbed while Lily shivered and coughed, pushing drunkenly back to her feet. But Mimsy had nodded, reluctantly, when Lily told her that she’d have to hit even harder than that. That it was much more dangerous to try for someone without really dropping them, if you had to do it.

Words of wisdom from Mad-Eye himself, Mad-Eye that didn’t hold with killing unless it was absolutely necessary, but when it _was_ necessary, well, you’d better make a good job of it, lest your intended victim rise up and get you while you shivered in the aftermath of knowing you’d just done them in.

“Ri-ight,” said Evan, his try at insouciant humour foundering on the way his hands had fisted, the way his gaze had gone bleak. “You know, as riveting as that sounds, that opportunity to be sat on…” And then he was surging up and at her, not well, not steadily, but with deathly focus, his hands clawing at her sleeves, at the insides of her arms, at the middle of her back, all common places for a wand holster.

She could have paused his breath with a thought, a pointed twinge of will. She’d gotten good at that spell, wandless, for medical purposes. She didn’t, though, didn’t touch him with magic, and not because she was worried for him, not because he was coughing dreadfully even as he fought her, not because she knew that the wrong amount of strain in the wrong place could do him serious damage.

No. She wanted, simply, this feeling of knowing she had the leverage, knowing she had the strength. That though they were half on the floor, her legs and arms were steady, her body had had food and sleep and comfort for these last few days, and his, well, his had obviously not.

There was still a moment when he almost– but Lily, grinning madly, cheated, and savoured the shock on Evan’s face when he felt his arms and legs snap together, trammelled by her Body-Bind. Then she was on top of him, her hands around his throat, despite the fact that he was fighting the bind, his body twitching frantically, his eyes wild.

“How’s it feel?” she heard herself ask. “How does it fucking feel?”

“Mistress,” Mimsy said, warningly, and suddenly Lily noticed that the warmth she’d been feeling tickling at her left hip wasn’t just exertion, it was fire, her fire, curling greedily forth from the sac that had split in her pocket during the struggle– “Miss!”

“I’ve got it,” Lily snapped, swatting down the flames with a thought, then, reluctantly, a free hand, when they whooshed back up, crackling sullenly. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Lily,” Evan said, hoarsely, from beneath her, no longer struggling despite his having clearly won free of her Body-Bind. No longer resisting at all. “Please don’t kill me that way, not fire. Not with fire.”

_Shut up,_ she would have said again, if she could have spared the attention. But the fire was eating at her, begging, supplicating. She was angry enough to burn something, had been angry since she saw his body, even before she knew it was definitely him.

Now _there_ was a thought, a thread of a thought she’d thoroughly forgotten on seeing Evan Rosier’s name. Anger contained for the moment, Lily hushed the fire still muttering in her pocket, then turned the full weight of her attention back down at the man beneath her. “Peter Pettigrew,” she said, precisely. “Is he one of yours? Newly joined up, maybe?”

“Not that I know of,” was the quiet, near-whispered answer. Said as if Evan couldn’t care less if it had been true, if Peter had gone over and tried to broker a deal for himself. “Wouldn’t surprise me, though.”

“Wouldn’t surprise you,” Lily said, hating the way her voice shook. Hating the way Evan went still again, because it meant she had to pull back, had to _focus_ , had to tamp down the flame again, all while thinking somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the endless rage, that it was something, wasn’t it, getting a potion to burn this long, even if its current output wasn’t anything like the real strength, the real, unmerciful flame.

She had to get off of him. Being this close, she could smell him, smell the faint thread of his customary scent, some stupidly expensive cologne he’d started using a week into their ill-advised relationship.

She didn’t know what she wanted more as she scrambled to her feet, to put her hands around his neck again, or to hear him scream as he burned, or… There was something wrong with her, that there was any extra ‘or’. That it was the kind of ‘or’ that made her feel flushed and sick, depraved and degraded for even thinking of it.

“Right,” she muttered, digging into her pocket, wincing slightly when the flame latched on to her fingers, a stinging, persistent annoyance as she balled up and dug out the split, wasted sac. “You can’t stand, can you?”

_Do not,_ she told herself, _even think of what else that could mean._ Which she couldn’t help but do, because of James, James and his delight in making the worst jokes using old-fashioned dirty phrases. _In fact, stop fucking thinking, just stop._

“No,” Evan said, quietly, his tone defeated, “I can’t stand.” A pause, then, as she closed her eyes and bit the inside of her lip and frowned, hard, so he wouldn’t think, couldn’t possibly guess how close she was to bursting into teary, hysterical giggles. “Didn’t think I’d manage so much of a fight, to be honest.”

“But you tried it,” she said. “Naturally, you had to try, just like you always–”

“You were going to hurt me,” Evan said, cutting in on top of her, his voice wavering, his tone solid with certainty. “You were, weren’t you?”

Lily clenched her fists. She didn’t know what she hated more, the fact that she _had_ been trying to hurt him, or the fact that she now wanted to deny it. “I wasn’t–”

“You were,” Evan insisted. “It’s that, for you, or killing me, and…” He looked directly up at her, forcing a smile. “I knew you wouldn’t kill me.”

That did it, that fucking did it. “Mimsy,” Lily heard herself say, distantly, even as she felt the fire wink out like it’d never existed, “give us a moment alone, will you?”

“Miss will be alright?”

Mimsy, having just seen Miss go from smiling vengefully down upon a Death Eater, to tussling physically with him, sparing no effort against a sick man, well. Mimsy was obviously dubious about what might happen if Miss actually went and lost her temper.

“I’ll be all right,” Lily said, nodding slightly. “He guessed right, you know. He knows I won’t kill him, and you know that–” And she couldn’t, all of a sudden, go on, because she’d realized, belatedly, that Mimsy mightn’t know even the obvious reason why her mistress might feel bound to keep from hurting Evan Rosier.

_Come to that,_ she thought, as she looked down at Evan, at the way he’d gone still, _it looks to me like_ he _doesn’t know why I wouldn’t hurt him._

So. She had to explain.

“I owe him,” she said, slowly, annoyed that it had to be spelled out, for him in particular, “a life debt.”

“Ah,” Mimsy said, her tone so very sceptical that Lily was hard pressed, again, to keep from bursting into nervous, hysterical laughter. “An old debt, miss?”

“Two, actually,” Lily murmured, thinking back to his frightening warning just before her last Christmas at Hogwarts. “Two debts.”

Mimsy pressed her lips together and nodded, disapproving to the last. She then departed with a subdued, nearly silent pop, giving Lily the privacy she’d requested. The privacy that Evan, from the tense way he held himself, was still quite obviously dreading, despite what she’d said.

He was clearly expecting Lily to set down the potions sacs, empty and not, on the table. He didn’t flinch, either, as she stepped back toward him, as she went to her knees by his side, as she wiped her hands clean of potion, and placed one on his scarred, barely moving chest. His breathing was calm and even as she smoothed her hand over him, gently, up and down the centre of his chest.

She’d planned to sit back after that. To roll her eyes at him when he inevitably ventured something about how life debts needed to be sworn to in public to really matter. To smirk at him, perhaps, when he pointed out that repaying such unsworn debts was more a matter of honour than anything else, and therefore the sort of thing a sneaky pureblood like himself would not want to rely on to preserve their lives in a pinch. She’d thought she’d enjoy hearing him say all that, and telling him, in a cool, mocking tone, that it was no one’s fault but his that he had no choice but to rely on her to honour her debts, whether he liked it or not.

But Lily had forgotten how it felt to touch someone, how it felt to have her hands on a man she knew would let her do anything she liked. Before she knew it, she was leaning in over Evan, both her hands engaged, caressing him.

She noticed, with relish, the way his breath caught when she pinched his nipples. The way his gaze fixed on her, purely disbelieving, as she trailed one hand down him, all the way down, seeking the place where his body was betraying him, sleep or no sleep.

The low, pained grunt he let out, when she finally stopped teasing, when she put her hand around him and squeezed… “Don’t,” he gasped, a moment later, his voice whispery and raw. “Don’t do that, when you’re only going to–”

Squeezing him harder made him gasp again, cutting himself off. “When I’m only going to what?” When he, panting, didn’t respond, she leaned in closer and pressed a small, swift kiss to his earlobe, then to his cheek. She wanted to lick his skin, wanted to pull his head around and see if his mouth still tasted the way she remembered, see if he would groan the way he always had when she sucked his bottom lip.

She didn’t. He was tense, still, and she was tense too, half-wondering what had possessed her, half wanting to just let it possess her all the way.

“Lily,” he said, his voice rough, and just a little bit too loud. “Please.” He was so very carefully still, though hard as anything, his cock twitching in her hand, something she could feel happening even through the thick cloth of his breeches. “Please.”

Please, stop, that meant, in that particular tone. So of course she listened, of course she– she–

She pulled her hand away, wiping it, scrubbing it frantically against her side, and then she was on her feet, suddenly, without realizing quite when she’d got up. Pacing, just a step or two away from where Evan lay.

Where he was curling in on himself. “I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I’m sorry, but I can’t…”

“It’s fine,” she said hurriedly, trying to sound calm. Not hurt, definitely not hurt, he was ill and frightened and unsure of her, and she’d just– he might have been thinking it was meant as revenge.

It’d be healthier, probably, as revenge. “It’s really all right,” Lily added, more calmly. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“I can’t do it again,” Evan said, suddenly. “I can’t– I can’t do what we had again and let you go.” Silence, from him and from her, a sudden weight of it. “And you know I’d have to let you go,” he added, wryly, in a slightly more normal tone. “You know. Considering my, ah, affiliations.”

Lily turned on him, unable to help herself. “Your affiliations,” she repeated, hardly able to get her head round what he had just said, had just implied. “You utter fucking bastard.”

For that, he blinked at her. _Surprised._ He had the gall, the absolute _gall_ to lie there, half-curled at her feet, pathetic and ill, and say, what, that she was only a temporary stop, that he’d, he’d wriggle his way free of the Aurors once she inevitably handed him in, and go right back to the shitty little murderers’ club he’d joined right out of school?

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, glaring down at him instead of– instead of giving him the kicking he righteously deserved. “I’m not giving you anything,” she managed to get out. “I’m not giving you back your fucking wand.”

“Lily–”

“You and your mates _broke_ mine, remember? So I’m due compensation.” That closed his half-open mouth for him, with a satisfying little click. “Did no one ever ask what the fuck happened back there? Is it just that common, your lot just fucking slaughtering each other?”

Evan, halfway through levering himself up into a sitting position, winced and shook his head. “I didn’t–”

“Oh, I forgot. You must’ve blamed your murders on my husband! Who’s dead now, so it can’t hurt him, and certainly won’t hurt you either–”

“ _Lily._ ”

“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” she couldn’t help but say, though she knew how desperate, how stupid it must make her look, to have been expecting anything, when all that was in his mind was strictly, unavoidably temporary. When all that had passed between them had only ever been temporary. “Why the fuck can’t you stay?”

“Er,” Evan said. He’d sat up, a bit, by now, and was staring at her. “You’d want that?”

She fell onto him, probably harder than was good for him, her fingers gripping his shoulders, sobbing inarticulately about how Voldemort was gone, and of course, and why would he think anything different. Why wouldn’t he even ask, when Voldemort, when that fucking bastard was finally gone.

“He’s gone,” she gasped, for perhaps the seventh time, and Evan put his shaking hand in her hair and whispered that he was sorry, and she had to hit him again. Well, not really hit him; at the last moment, Lily turned it into a semi-gentle shove, since he wasn’t looking very much better than he had, initially.

She got up, wiping her eyes, and took up the vial of Strengthening Solution Mimsy had laid by, and stood over him while he choked it down and made faces. And then sat again, on the floor beside him, to be silent for a while.

And then she said: “I meant fucking Voldemort, you idiot.”

“I realize that now, thank you.” He wiped at his mouth, patting genteelly, which jarred her until she realized that she was used to only seeing him doing that after he’d just gone down on her, his smug gaze deliberately holding hers as he did it. Just now, he was looking down at the empty vial. “That really was quite gritty.”

“Not my fault,” she said, sniffing deliberately. “You may have heard that a certain group all but stopped the ingredient trade, these last few months.”

“Yes, yes, everything’s my fault.” But he didn’t sound very much like he was joking. He said it almost wearily, with the bare ghost of a smile. “Which is why, well, at least half of why a certain question about staying wasn’t asked.”

Silence, again.

“How bad is it?” Lily found herself asking. “How much, um, how many did you…?”

She couldn’t finish the sentence, even though she knew she ought to be able to, ought to just give up on even the idea of this ridiculous relationship if she couldn’t voice such a question. Because, like it or not, she couldn’t see a way around Azkaban for any obvious Death Eater the Ministry could lay hands on now, no matter how faintly they were marked. And Evan was marked, still.

There was something really quite strange about having to squint a bit to see it, when she had been used to really not wanting to see it, but being unable to miss it when he rolled up his sleeves.

“I killed,” Evan said, without looking up at her, “more than enough.”

Another silence. “But,” Lily said, carefully, “considering how you let me go…” Thin, very shamefully thin, but perhaps it might knock off a month from his sentence. “And, you could, maybe, if you know where some of the other, other Death Eaters are…”

“My dear,” he said, with a sly glance in her direction, “you don’t have to tell me _that_. Informing on one’s comrades for one’s own benefit is a grand Slytherin tradition.” Then he looked down at his hands, sighing explosively. “Provided one can get away with it, with no messy scenes of reprisal.”

_You don’t have to risk it,_ she half wanted to say, though she knew how futile it would be. If Evan had already thought of it, if his only concern was how best he could manage it, he was probably going to do it anyway, because Evan Rosier was the sort that only ever did what he liked. Which meant that just now, when she had begged him to stay with her, and wept in his arms as he promised he would… Surely, he hadn’t just been telling her what she’d so obviously wanted to hear.

“And if it doesn’t work,” she said, shifting to press herself a little more closely to his side, “you’ll run, won’t you?”

“It won’t come to that,” Evan said, dismissively. And then, suddenly turning on her: “Even if it _does_ come to that, you are absolutely not to– if you involve yourself–”

“I won’t,” Lily said, cutting him off. “Don’t love you quite _that_ much.” And then, when he went markedly still: “Erm. Well.” She didn’t know what to say to break his sudden tension; she knew she should probably look at him, to see how he’d taken that, that half-arsed declaration, but she just couldn’t do it. “I loved James.”

“I know.”

_Why_ had she said that? Why? “I don’t mean… it’s, I loved him. I couldn’t not.” This was horrible, but she felt she had to say it. Had to finish it, properly, now that it was half out, half said, half explained. “He was, when I needed anything, anything at all, he was always…” She swallowed. “I didn’t think I deserved any of it, but he’d just smile and make me feel that didn’t matter. That maybe I could… anyway. So I loved him.”

And she thought, still, that if she ever could, if the Wilkes’ house address ever fell into her hands, and they ever so much as put another toe out of line again…

“I do hear you,” Evan said, quietly, with a sideways, shuttered look. “I understand.”

“For goodness’ sake, I’m not even finished,” she snapped. “I loved you too, you massive moron. I’m not going to Azkaban for– for trying to break you out, or help you escape, because it’d be stupidly impractical, not because I don’t love you enough to even think of trying.” She wondered, suddenly, if Azkaban was warded against house elf Apparition. Then thought of just how old and important it was, and grimaced, conceding that it probably was. And that it had probably meant a whole lot of useless house elf deaths, because of course a prison would be worth the expense. “What do you think about house elves?”

“Er,” Evan said, and so she found herself explaining, not everything she’d been thinking, but the general furious gist of it, as she surged to her feet and helped him up after her, struggling to balance out his weight. “Ah,” he said, as she explained how shocked she’d felt, on asking Mr. Merrywood (or perhaps it had been Mrs. Alster?) about raising Mimsy’s wages, and hearing, in a distinctly patronizing tone, that house elves weren’t paid, no, never.

That they weren’t _slaves_ , oh no, not that way. They were _bonded_. They needed the connection, they needed to serve, liked serving wizards, and on and on and the whole rot.

Evan was at least good at nodding and saying a very bland, very careful “hmm” as she ranted. Sirius had looked at her as if she were mad. Had asked her, bluntly, if Mimsy had ever seemed unhappy with her situation, to which she had had to admit, through gritted teeth, that no, Mimsy seemed perfectly happy.

Mimsy had also been perfectly happy to sign the hasty, haphazard, and most likely legally unenforceable lease that Lily had written out to deed her the unrestricted use of the garden and the shed in lieu of wages. Lily being profoundly uninterested in doing anything in the garden other than harvesting the occasional fortuitously spawned ingredient, and Mimsy having allowed that she missed her work in the Hogwarts greenhouses something awful.

Mimsy, who had only had to be told once that weekends were indeed her days off, and that popping over to Hogwarts to give her mum a hand in the kitchens was, if not strictly a holiday activity, still something she could do if she chose.

“Holidays,” Evan said, still blandly. “How intriguing.”

“I know you don’t bloody well agree,” Lily groused. “No need to put on that tone.” Then they both fell silent, working at ascending the stairs in laboured tandem. “I _could_ just float you up.”

“Not too much more,” he said, gulping. “I can do it.” But he leaned heavily on her arm when they finally got to the upstairs landing, and so she rolled her eyes and let go, and cast a really careful Featherlight Charm. “Oh! I thought you meant–”

“It’s far too narrow getting from here to the attic; I couldn’t float you conventionally,” she said, coolly, though she felt a little smug about the way he’d brightened when he realized she wouldn’t be levitating him. “Not too much, is it?”

“It’s perfect,” Evan said, with a sideways look at her. “Simply perfect.”

“Hmm,” was all she said back, though she was inwardly bursting with stupid pride. “Wait just a bit, this needs a good tug…” The trapdoor to the spare bedroom in the attic came loose with an almighty squeal, the unfolding ladder nearly decking them both. “Christ. Can you tell how much I hate this place?”

Then, as he was easing himself gingerly between the slightly musty covers on the bed, she asked: “How _did_ you find this place?”

“Ah. Um,” Evan said, looking at her, and then away. “My banker…?”

“Your what?”

“Potter bought it a year or so before graduation, on the quiet,” was the measured answer. “Wasn’t the only thing he bought, true, but it _did_ lose an address in bank records. Which, well, considering the political climate at the time…”

Lily somehow unhinged her gritted teeth enough to make a response. “I get it,” she said. “Sloppy of us, I know.” They’d considered the Fidelius on top of unplottability, but they hadn’t wanted to commit, and they’d also thought unplotting the cottage at the seaside as well would be enough to throw anyone off the scent. “Wait,” she added, “it wasn’t the only house that lost an address. How–”

“As I was saying,” Evan said hastily, avoiding her eye, “I induced my banker, with bribes, to furnish me with the list, and guesses as to approximate original locations. I was working from that list when the Dark Lord, ah, narrowed it down for me.”

Peter. It had to be Peter. “But you said– you said you didn’t know, about…” She had to make herself say it. “You know that had to have been Peter.”

Evan, for answer, reached out to squeeze her shaking hand. “It was when you asked about him,” he said, roughly, “that I guessed.” Then, after a moment: “The Dark Lord didn’t ever tell me everything. Didn’t tell anyone at all everything, as far as I know. He preferred to be the only one in possession of all the pieces.” Finally, he looked up at her, his gaze direct, beseeching. “I was trying– he’d given me a task, for you. Regarding you.” He gulped. “I’d hoped to send you away. Anywhere. If possible.”

Lily, thinking of the several cauldrons’ worth of fire starter that she’d been brewing, could only shake her head and pull her hand out of his shaky grasp. “Nice of you to think of it, though we both know I wouldn’t have gone.”

“Lily–”

“It’s all right,” she said, forcing a smile. “We’re all right, I’m just. It’s hardly as if you’d have been able to tell me who it was, when you showed up.” Probably, once Evan had been given the approximate address of this house, he’d known that someone close to her had turned traitor. Probably, that had been one of his planned arguments for getting her to flee the country.

_No one can be trusted,_ she could all too easily imagine him saying, as his hands tightened around her wrists. _You_ have _to leave; nowhere here is safe._

“Try to sleep,” she said, edging back down the ladder. “We’ll talk about turning you in in the morning, eh?” And then she was scrabbling her way downwards, blinking hard, shaking as she got down off the ladder, just shaking.

_He’d given me a task, for you. Regarding you._

God only knew what it had been. God only knew what Peter had put her in for, Peter that had warded this fucking house, Peter whose cough, whose wounds she had slaved over, Peter who she had hugged–

Silently, Lily wept.


	6. high noon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big ol' dollop of rape fantasy in this chapter, as well as some flashbacks to the rape in chapter 2.

## high noon

Lily wept for what felt like hours, but was really only about forty minutes.

She timed it, both hands shaking, her wandless _Tempus_ growing bright blue numbers in her cupped palms. It felt cathartic to sit there on the floor in the cramped corridor beneath the attic trapdoor, doing nothing of worth, nothing pressing, nothing useful.

Probably, what she needed to be doing was scribbling a frantic letter to owl to Alster & Merrywood to consult their opinion on whether it was at all safe, legally, to harbour a wanted criminal for a few hours while he slept. _As Lady Potter,_ their reply would most likely begin, even though they both knew that a flimsy mudblood heir to the Potter Barony could not necessarily expect the same kid-glove treatment from the Ministry as a _real_ Potter might.

She hated so much that she was– that she had put herself in this position. That even as she wept, even as her mind raced through the most likely consequences she could end up facing for trying to keep things going with Evan, she already knew she was deciding on sticking with it. With him.

She’d decided, probably, at the very moment she’d looked on his bare, diminished body, as she’d looked at the horrible new scars that serving Voldemort had won him. _It didn’t work,_ she thought now, fiercely. Stupidly. _You couldn’t keep him forever._

The Ministry, on the other hand, would very likely succeed where Voldemort had failed.

_Think,_ she told herself. _It’s not– you can’t call it unfair, not after everything he’s probably done._ Probably, whatever trial he got would end up surfacing gruesome enough stories that it wouldn’t seem unfair to her at all, when they finally led Evan off to Azkaban.

Sobbing, Lily curled in on herself, putting her head against her knees. “We should’ve run away,” she whispered. But she couldn’t think of how she would have managed to convince herself it was possible, or even necessary. That it’d be hard, but nowhere near as hard as staying.

And Evan… That _he_ hadn’t tried, that he’d known, from visions, imagined or real, or perhaps just from constant, terrified calculation, that his best chance at survival was to stay and join in…

Sighing bitterly, Lily wiped at her eyes with shaking fingers. Sniffled, blowing her nose on her sleeve. “Right,” she muttered. “That letter.”

Before the letter, though, was the slow, steady reinforcement of the wards. She paced the boundaries barefoot again, bleeding. Once done, she went back inside, ignoring Mimsy’s dirty looks as she wrote the pertinent, carefully phrased letter to her lawyers while she soaked her feet, the parchment balanced on a book across her knees.

Orpheus, James’ old owl, clicked his beak at her menacingly when she went out to the shed to chivvy him up, but he consented, as always, to be bribed into action with strips of roast. “Hawley first,” she told him, only to have him ruffle his feathers at her and take to wing, circling to give her the eye before he headed off north. The wrong direction, if he were to stop in at Hawley to be re-charmed against tracking, which meant there’d be some extra hours’ delay while he meandered his way there.

Sighing, Lily went back inside to sit for roast, and a series of pointed comments about how wise it was, really, to have Mr. Rosier here when it’d be much better for him at Mungo’s. “He’s only here for today,” Lily finally said, fed up with Mimsy’s hints. “A day and a half at most, I promise, on my line and on my heart.”

Probably, that really quite serious vow was not supposed to be said through gritted teeth as you savaged your roasted carrots with knife and fork, but it had so far been that kind of day. And it did get Mimsy to sniff and turn her attention back to her own, nearly empty plate.

Probably, that was why Lily found herself tiptoeing back into the attic end of the corridor after a brief, hasty shower, telling herself that she was only going up to look in on Evan to see if she needed to re-dose him. Evan, who she’d expected to be safely, heavily asleep, and not sat up in bed, reading over a long, unfolded letter in his lap.

“What…?” Lily asked, blinking, half about to ask how he’d managed to get hold of her lawyers’ reply so quickly. But a careful, hunched step closer to the bed showed her the seal on the discarded envelope was entirely different, a bird within a square instead of a flower and a sword, and anyway, it wasn’t as if Orpheus was in here. Or, indeed, as if the one tiny attic window looked as if it had been opened. “How did you…?”

“Box,” Evan muttered. “No owls, don’t worry.”

“What box?” she asked, only to spot the small, handsomely carved silver pencil-case that lay open to his left. It was a slim affair, one just long and wide enough to hold a few, carefully folded sheets of parchment. The pattern of the creases in the letter he was reading seemed to match the dimensions of the case. “It’s paired, then, with something at the other end?”

“Mm,” Evan said, now making crabbed little notes at the bottom of the letter. He was using a pencil that was possibly the smallest, grubbiest one she’d ever seen, but he somehow managed to write in a neat, if rather cramped script. “Just a moment.”

“You needn’t rush,” she said, hoping she wasn’t speaking too quickly, too guiltily. “I just came up to look in on you, see if another dose of Easing Draught might help the cough.” At least she’d had the presence of mind to stop in at the lab downstairs before coming up to shower and, and what, seduce the bloody Death Eater she’d thought would be shivering in her attic, coughing pathetically and yearning for her touch?

Yet here he was, coughing, yes, but also doggedly folding and refolding a letter that was most likely from his family’s lawyers, obviously preparing to return it to them with notes by way of his fancy fucking magic pencil-case. Which probably _was_ all real silver, it certainly looked old and shiny enough as he shut it securely. “There. You said there was, um…”

“Easing Draught,” she said, hands digging in her pockets. “Here. And, and I do think another strengthener wouldn’t hurt. And Pepper-Up.”

“Pepper-Up,” Evan said, his tone dubious, even as he accepted that last vial from her. “For the complementary interaction?”

“Yep,” she said, brightly. Possibly too brightly, from the wary way he looked up at her. “I’ll just, um, we’ve got some leftovers, if, er, if you think you can keep them down, if you need to eat before you leave–”

“Lily.” His free hand closed around hers, lightly, though it might as well have been an iron grip, from the stupid way she went still once he touched her. “Please, sit.”

Trembling, trying to keep her hands from visibly shaking, she scrambled onto the bed and sat down beside him, fidgeting, tugging at her robes so they covered her bare feet. The bed was just narrow enough that she could sit down near the edge without looking like she was deliberately trying to keep some sort of distance between them. “What is it?”

He’d moved over and taken his hand away from hers, as she sat; now, that same hand settled on her knee. Lightly. “You really,” he said, “you see, I really think you needn’t worry…”

He was looking at her mouth.

Then, when he met her eye, and he realized he’d been caught, Evan looked away from her, his voice trailing off into nothing. She leant in toward him, hungry, desperate, only to have him turn his gaze back on her, freezing her where she was, uncertain.

His hand moved an inch, more than an inch, from her knee to her thigh, and then froze as well. She turned a little, putting a hand on his chest– such a fucking shame, she thought, guiltily, that he’d buttoned up again at some point, possibly just after he’d woken up. “Can I?”

“It isn’t,” Evan said, but he was already sliding his hand higher, his fingers curling into the fabric of her robes. “I shouldn’t.”

But he leaned in toward her while she picked at his buttons, and let out a low groan when she gave up on that and pulled him in toward her by the neck of his robes. He kissed her eagerly, his mouth foul with the strange, mingled aftertaste of potions, his tongue hot and wet, licking deep inside her mouth, stroking her the way she’d always liked. When she moaned, he moaned with her, his hands in her still-damp hair, his fingers stroking the back of her neck.

“Fuck me,” she said, and that got him on top of her, heavier than she remembered, which made no sense until she also remembered the way he had carefully braced himself on top of her, in that horrible moment where she’d laid helpless on his couch.

She didn’t like to think of how it had felt. She’d never revisited that memory, not the way she’d forced herself to do for the moment with Simmons. Simmons had made her irrationally afraid, making her question what she had done to provoke his final, most intimate assault. Evan, on the other hand…

She’d dreamed of Evan, of the start of so many awful possibilities involving him. She’d dreamed of him staying with her and smiling as he watched the other Death Eaters fuck her mouth, all while she shook, and got betrayingly wet, aching for him to push Simmons aside and plunge into her. She’d dreamed of him slicking up on top of her on that cursed couch, and then slicking her up as well, his mocking, merciless gaze pinning her down as he got her good and ready to take him. She’d even dreamed of him turning up on her doorstep and chasing her into the house, pinning her down over the kitchen table while she shook and squirmed and sobbed.

Before she’d lost James, it’d been easy to brush it all off. Well, not easy, but doable. After, just after, she’d dreamed solely of James, and of the Wilkes, and what the Wilkes might look like if she got her hands on any of them, and those dreams had most definitely been worse, had always left her feeling dry-eyed and shaking, eaten up with endless, aching rage.

When the dreams of Evan had come back, it had felt almost cathartic, waking flushed, angry and shivery from what felt like hours of aching and squirming and pleading fruitlessly beneath Evan’s hard, heavy frame. There’d never been any penetration, other than with tongues and fingers; there had simply been the fear of it, the expectation, the crushing guilt of knowing that she’d welcome it if it happened, no matter how twisted the originating circumstance.

Somewhere along the line, Lily had stopped feeling guilty about it. Though she knew, now, as Evan rubbed his fingers slowly against the lips of her tight, aching cunt, that no amount of guilt would have kept her from this. “I need it,” she choked out, desperate, rocking up into his touch. “Please, don’t stop, I need it.”

He shuddered, and his careful, shaky touch became more forceful, his fingers pressing firmly against her clit, and then just his palm, even harder. His free hand tugged hard at her half-shed knickers, dragging them down her thighs. “Move,” he said, lowly, and she moved, lifting her legs, so he could ease her knickers all the way off.

His hand– she could feel just how wet she was, from the way his palm slipped against her. “You– please–”

“Yes,” Evan said. “Yes, I’ll fuck you. I’ll always fuck you.” He was breathing hard, failing to keep up a rhythm while he tried to unbutton himself, to get his robes and breeches out of the way. She had to help him, had to push him off and get up onto her knees, her hands shaking nearly as much as his, but her fingers just that bit more sure.

She remembered– “Don’t, I’ll– you know I’ll–” She remembered how much he liked seeing her stroke his cock, seeing her hand move back and forth in the small space between them, half-obscured by their disarranged clothes. “Lily–”

She slowed her hand on him. Moved in for a long, sloppy kiss. This felt so much filthier, now, than it had done at school. She thought at first that it must be the memories, the things that he’d done to her, the things he had allowed to be done. But, as she kissed Evan again and again, she realized that it felt filthy now because she knew they had time, time enough to give each other a good, hard go. She could savour each one of his ragged breaths, savour the way he moaned when she bit his lower lip, savour the fact that his prick was leaking so much all that it slid easily through the tight circle of her fingers, without her once having to lick her hand for him.

He trembled, but he refused to move, to rock his hips forward, to pump himself into her hand. “I don’t,” he said, his voice low and strangled. “You know I don’t deserve this.”

“But you want it.”

“I always–” Evan moved, once, helplessly, thrusting just an inch forward. “I wanted it.”

“I know–”

“You don’t.” He was shivering now, moving again, very slowly. “I– when I had you, when I _took_ you– I wanted it. I wanted to rape you.”

“But,” Lily said, shocked, half at what he was saying, half at the fact that she was still– she still wanted– “You don’t… You wouldn’t have. I mean, you had to do some of it, but–”

Evan put his hand around hers, tightening her grip on his cock in a way that made her shiver, made her garbled protest stutter to a halt. “At the time,” he said, roughly, “I thought, or rather, I knew it’d be harder to get you away from the main house, so I took you to mine instead.”

A pause, while they both breathed each other’s air, while she looked at him, aching, wishing he would meet her eye.

Then: “I set things up. Used you to distract them, so they’d– so that when Potter finally came…” So his fellow Death Eaters would have been easy pickings for James and Sirius, all while Evan was safely away. “I wasn’t planning on coming back.”

That did it, that last sentence. Lily pulled back, flinching, and hated herself for how disappointed she felt when Evan let her do it, let her take her hand away from his cock. “You left me there, potioned, with– with– as a distraction.”

“Yes.”

She slapped him. Not particularly hard, though, because she was shaking, and he was shaking too.

“It,” Evan said, still not looking at her, “I couldn’t– I knew it wouldn’t help, when I came back. I knew it wouldn’t help my cover, coming back in and killing them all before Potter and Black could do it. But…”

Now, she wished he wouldn’t look at her, not like that. Not when he was only going to look away again, and say, matter-of-factly: “I wanted to see you again.” As if it had simply been a matter of Apparating over for tea. “And so I did.”

She wanted to slap him again, hard enough to wipe away that embarrassed, self-loathing expression he was struggling to hide, his face half-turned from her. “And by ‘seeing me’,” she said instead, through gritted teeth, “I suppose you meant…” Coming back, but not in time, not until after Simmons had gotten inside her. “I suppose,” she tried again, her tone low and precise, “you meant coming back and killing that bastard while he was still on top of me?”

“Lily, that wasn’t…”

“I know _that_ was you taking advantage of his bloody distraction, I’m not bloody stupid. But you terrified me.”

“I didn’t mean–”

“–and you said,” she said, cutting him off, because now she couldn’t help but remember everything else, “when I woke up, you said, you asked if I’d like the lie.” Now, of course, Evan had fallen silent. Now, he failed to defend himself, to try and offer half-voiced explanations. “You said it’d be safer for me to lie there and get fucked, get _raped_ by you–”

“Yes. It would have been a lot safer, for you and I both.”

She was starting to hate that calm, serious tone of his. She was starting to hate it quite a lot.

“Lily?”

This new tone was even worse, calm on the face of it, destroyed beneath, but trying desperately to conceal it. She moved back a bit, sitting back on her heels, trying and failing not to look at him, because he was still just too close, and the room was too small and too sparsely furnished to hold her eye when Evan Rosier knelt, half dressed, before her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I’m sorry I, I encouraged them–”

“Are you?” Lily couldn’t help but say. “Didn’t it help your precious fucking cover story, in the end?” The cover story that he’d apparently all but tossed out on its ear, faced with the opportunity to– to come back and dazzle her. To play the hero, when they both knew he was no such thing. “Well?”

Brief, choked silence ensued, ended only by a strangled little cough from Evan. “It,” he said. “Yes. It did.”

“Really.” She had to make herself breathe in, and out. In and out. For calm. To sound as calm as possible when she finally said: “Be a little more precise, would you, Evan?”

And then, when he didn’t say anything: “Actions. Give me specific actions that helped you, right fucking now.”

He shifted uncomfortably, something she only let herself see out of the corner of her eye. “The, er. The wank at the end.”

“The _wank_?” That word matched not at all with how it had felt to lie beneath him, terrified, expecting, knowing that there might be more, be _worse_ , that having him rutting into his hand on top of her was only the beginning.

Seeing her expression, Evan coughed again. Cleared his throat. “The act,” he said, delicately, “was an extremely– was a regrettably helpful addition.”

She slapped him. Harder, this time, making sure to catch him full on the cheek, as if it would fix anything. It made him hard again, obscenely so, his thick, sticky cock swelling visibly, twitching as he shifted in place, refusing to look at her. “Go on, then,” she said, watching him. Wishing she could stop watching him. “I’m listening.”

His breath came faster. “The potions, all three of them, were absolutely necessary.” When she didn’t immediately respond, Evan looked up at her out of the corner of his eye, and added, quickly: “You’d have been hurt worse without them.” Flinching a little as he said it, as if he knew he was making a blindingly obvious point, but couldn’t help himself, couldn’t pass up the slim chance that it might help to point it out.

Lily rolled her eyes, then sighed, giving him a small, grudging nod, deliberately acknowledging his point. Then, just as he straightened, his shoulders relaxed, his mouth opening for another confession, she said: “Pity you didn’t bother with something for my inner thighs.” And then, when he looked at her, stricken: “You needn’t worry. They did heal, you know. Eventually.”

It had never been easy for her to tell when Evan was blushing or otherwise openly discomfited. Even now, pale and sallow from years of illicit activities done mostly indoors or at night, his skin was still just brown enough that it was hard to tell when he flushed. You had to watch for the way his eyes widened briefly, the way he caught himself, but could not quite keep from looking down and away from you at least once, and then the way he’d sneak a glance at you, to see if you’d noticed his embarrassment.

He was definitely blushing now. Mortified, and wasn’t it just something, seeing him there, cock out, hard as anything. Guilty. Feeling it as badly as she did.

“Should’ve thought of that,” Evan said, lowly, his voice steadier than before. “Very sorry.” But of course he didn’t dare look at her as he said it. Incensed, Lily reached out to him, knowing how much of a bad idea it was, knowing it wasn’t at all right to reach up and wrap her hand around his cock and give him a slow, careful stroke.

_Now_ he looked at her. “Are–” His voice hitched, breaking off nearly mid-word as she squeezed him. “You… you don’t…”

No point answering, when he couldn’t even pull it together well enough to ask her an intelligible question. She simply worked him, one hand, then two, because she wanted him to make that strangled sound– that one– and she wanted to see the way his thighs tensed as she handled his balls. “Lie down.”

Evan went still, breathing hard as she took her hands away from him. She waited silently, giving him the chance to shake his head and edge away from her. Giving him every chance to do the sensible thing and say no, turning down her aggressive offer.

He didn’t. He laid down for her, and watched, rapt, as she slowly climbed on top of him.

They’d never done anything like this at school, never got round to it, beds and stably transfigured couches being somewhat of a short commodity in Hogwarts broom closets. And it had always been so much easier, letting him do her up against the wall, or down on her knees, or over the rickety desks in abandoned classrooms. This– her on top– this, she had only ever done with James.

Somehow, that thought, that one, painful thought, was the one to bring tears to her eyes, hot, scalding tears that brimmed and went trickling down her face before she’d even realized she needed to blink them away.

_I don’t forgive you,_ she wanted to say, as she moved forward, as Evan lay trembling beneath her, his cock now trapped under her slick, aching cunt. _I’ll never forgive you._

“Don’t say anything,” she said, instead, bracing herself with a hand on his chest, as she lifted up, her other hand stroking him, positioning him, rubbing him against her. “Don’t say a fucking word.”

She took him in, the very tip of him, and it wasn’t anything like what she’d fantasized about, wasn’t anything like her fevered dreams. It hurt, even though she was properly wet, just because it’d been so long, and he was thicker than James, thick enough that he stretched her. The sweet burn of him pressing just inside her…

She didn’t want to stop.

She’d thought she would, somehow, that once… once he was inside, she’d regret it. That he’d take control and give it to her, and all she’d be able to do was lie there taking it, regretting it, free to clench around him and sob and hate herself and come, and feel nothing but a nice, tidy hate for him, after.

She’d thought Evan would have said something, by now. But, as she rocked up and down, forcing his thick cock deeper and deeper inside her, he stared up at her in stricken silence, his lips parted and wet. Spellbound, he fisted his hands in the threadbare duvet cover and shifted his legs, spreading them, gaining and using the leverage to thrust back up, just a little.

When she let out a strangled, guilty moan, he thrust up harder, matching her, grinding into her, filling her. It was–

It was almost perfect. The hot, aching slide of him inside her, the way Evan rocked up as she ground down, the way she could feel every inch of his cock, the way the angle dragged him inside her, just in the right spot…

It wasn’t enough. “Touch me,” Lily snapped, and he hurried to obey. “There.” Not enough. Still not enough. “Get on top of me.”

“Are you sure–”

“Just fucking shut up and do it.”

She felt on edge, trembling, when Evan rolled them over, ending up on top of her. It was– it shouldn’t have worked, that it was him, almost like it had been, almost exactly what she had so badly feared would happen, while she lay in his arms on that godforsaken couch in his house, dreading his violation. But…

He pinned her down, solidly, and all she wanted was to be fucked, used, filled. “Yes,” she rasped, but he was already sliding his cock into her. “Look at me.”

“I–”

“Look at me while you fucking rape me.”

He did. Just for a moment, his breath hot and harsh on her face, his dark gaze finally meeting hers. Then his gaze fell to her mouth, and Evan lowered himself a little more, on arms that she knew were shaking, because he had pinned both of hers above her head, his grip tight enough to bruise. She surged up against him, desperate for a kiss, and he met her, hard, crushing her back into the bed as he licked inside her mouth.

They bit at each other. He took her slowly, at first, much more slowly than she really wanted, something that confused her until he pulled back away from her, and she saw the filthy, guilty look on his face. He’d always liked pumping his whole length in and out of her like this, slowly, so she could feel, from the smooth ease of his intrusion, how very wet he had made her.

“Don’t,” she found herself saying, without quite meaning to. “Don’t just–” And then he was cutting her off with another deep, wet kiss, biting her lips just hard enough that it stung, asserting his control of the encounter.

She thought, for a moment, that when he pulled back again, he would say something to her, but instead he came back in, his grip tightening on her wrists, his mouth pressing sloppy kisses on her cheek, her jawline, her neck. Shivering, she tried to shift, tried to twist beneath him to make it harder for him, but it was impossible, it only made his insistent, breathy kisses feel that much more forced on her, taken from her.

“Stop it,” she sobbed, half meaning it, only to find herself whining when he did stop, breathing hard. “No, I don’t, I only–”

“You need it,” he said, his voice low and dark, his breath hot against her ear. “I’m only trying to give you what you need.”

As he spoke, he ground his hips against hers, working his cock in and out of her by inches, his small, deliberate motions stimulating her entrance. She felt full. Trapped. Impaled, in the best and worst way, with all her focus narrowed to the way he was rocking and grinding against her.

“You wanted it,” Evan said. “You wanted it just like this.” And he sped up slowly, changing the angle slightly, thrusting harder and harder, until he was taking her brutally, his body slamming into hers with loud, filthy smacks. She cried out, wordless, her face pressed into the bare skin of his shoulder, and felt his answering groan like a physical thing in her body, in her slick, stretched, aching cunt.

“Yes,” she heard herself say, hoarsely, again and again, as she writhed beneath him. “Use me.” She wasn’t sure he understood what she was saying, wasn’t sure he even heard it at all; her voice was a rough, weak sob, a thread of sound barely louder than the crashing of their breaths, the creak of the mattress, the sweet, hard slap of his body against hers. “Take me.”

Evan heard that.

He didn’t say anything, but when next he pulled back from her, there was something different in the way he looked at her, something dark and hungry, something almost frightening. He put his hands on her breasts, squeezing them through her bra, pinching her nipples cruelly. He slowed his thrusts slightly, stroking her inside, barely lifting his hips away from her, working her and fucking her until she was shaking, clenching helplessly around him, coming again and again.

“Whore,” Evan breathed, as he felt it, his voice shaking. “My little whore.” And then he was back to punishing her, slamming into her, forcing his cock deep into her aching cunt. When she cried out, he moved one hand up from her breasts to cover her mouth, smothering her screams.

“Take it,” he said, his voice strangled. “Take it.” He came then, tensing on top of her, groaning, his weight crushing her. He pumped his thick, twitching cock slowly in and out of her cunt, emptying himself thoroughly.

When he finally slipped himself out of her, he did it slowly. Carefully. “Shall I,” he began to say, like he’d always used to do at school, afterwards, ready with spells for cleansing and soothing and doing every other thing a just-fucked slut could possibly want. Only, instead of taking out or summoning his wand, he simply froze there for a moment, awkwardly, and then got the rest of the way off of her. “Would you consider returning my wand a little early?”

“Shut up.” Lily knew she should get up, ideally, get up and pull on her robes again and go to her own bed, to sleep safely away from him, but she was too tired to do more than lie there, exhausted. “You’ll get your wand back tomorrow.”

Evan looked down at her, warily, then began to tidy himself up, which mostly consisted of going through his robe pockets in search of an improbably clean, freshly-pressed handkerchief, and then using that neat white square to wipe down his hands and his cock. “Would you like–”

“Fuck off,” Lily muttered. Then, when he wordlessly extended the now slightly less clean handkerchief in her direction, she let out a near-soundless huff, parting her aching thighs to give him access. “Just let me alone, once you’re done.”

She pretended not to watch him while he wiped the soft cloth against her. She pretended not to notice the way he ran his fingers over the slightly roughened skin on the inner curve of her thighs. She closed her eyes when it seemed as if he would look up at her, and her sneakiness was rewarded by a light, gentle touch to her cheek, and an even lighter kiss.

She was half expecting Evan to lever himself back up, inching around her supposedly drowsing form so he could get off the bed and tiptoe his way down the attic ladder. She went on expecting it as he sat there, a little ways off to her right, rustling, fiddling with something. So it was a sudden shock to feel him flop down beside her, to feel him scoot in close, until she felt his breath warm on the back of her neck.

Naturally, he was very careful not to touch her, just for a few moments, wary, perhaps, of having woken her. Then, when Lily went on being still, simply breathing next to him, she felt Evan’s hand settle on her waist. Then, moving carefully, he very slowly drew the two of them together, until he was pressed against right against her back.

_Idiot,_ she thought, half annoyed, half flattered. _Just a little longer, and I’ll get up to leave._

* * *

Lily didn’t know she’d slept until she felt herself suddenly jerking awake, disoriented, an arm draped loosely over her waist, a too-warm body pressed close behind hers beneath the covers.

“Lily?” Sirius’ voice called out, slightly slurred, the way it got when he was fairly well soused. “Lil-ly, Lil-ly, where are you?”

It wasn’t Sirius behind her, nor James, either, because Sirius was racketing about downstairs and James would never have woken for that, would never have been still behind her, not like this, tense and expectant. Ready for violence, wanded or not.

“Evan?” she said, muzzily, turning as best as she could. “You… you just, I need you to just stay up here, d’you understand?”

“Don’t see where you think I’d get to,” was the slow, drawled answer. “I don’t even have my wand.”

There was something about hearing his voice so close, hearing Evan so near her, that gave her the wickedest, stupidest thrill, even though she could still hear Sirius singing downstairs, a clear and present danger. “Shut up,” Lily hissed, “and _stay put_.”

She couldn’t blame what happened next on Evan, on his having to play the mischievous, devil-may-care whoever by pawing her as she struggled up from beneath the covers. He smirked up at her, yes, and she felt his hot gaze on her as she tugged her robes back on over her head, but he was otherwise the perfect gentleman, pulling back the covers for her and helping her locate her knickers in blessed silence.

Instead, it was, improbably, all Mimsy’s fault.

“Miss is upstairs,” Lily heard her half say, half yell, because you had to yell, really, to be heard over a drunken Sirius. “Upstairs, Mr. Sirius, _upstairs_!”

And Sirius, curse him, had already come halfway up, humming just quietly enough to give Lily a false sense of confidence in how much time she’d have to shin into her knickers, smooth down her robes, scramble down out of the attic and perhaps pretend to have been coming out of the bathroom.

Instead, when she stumbled off the attic ladder, she stumbled right into Sirius’ arms, and found herself being swung around and around and _around_ and laughed at. Then she was dizzy when he put her down, too fucking stupidly dizzy to process what he said quickly enough to figure out what he’d do next.

Which was to haul himself up the ladder, eyes twinkling, eyebrows waggling, even as she cursed at him and tried, fruitlessly, to drag him back.

“Good grief,” Sirius said, chortling. “Now I _know_ it’s the Minister you’ve got up there, you naughty thing. You’ve been banging old Bagnold–”

She knew the moment he saw Evan, because his entire frame froze. And then he was tearing up out of her grip, roaring unintelligibly, and then things were very fractured, for a few horrible moments.

Not _badly_ fractured, because Sirius was drunk enough that the punches came out before the curses, the curses she could almost feel him seething with by the time she’d separated them, pulling them apart with sheer will and the sudden, desperately welcome assistance of a shaking Mimsy.

“Miss,” she said, afterwards, when both Sirius and Evan were restrained, Sirius on the bed and Evan on the narrow strip of floor at Lily’s feet, “oh Miss, I was not meaning– I did not think, I only thought–”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Lily said, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s all right, really. Simpler, to tell him.”

“Simpler to tell me what?” Sirius said, his tone murderous. “You’d best be ready to top me, if this– if this is _anything_ like–”

“I’m not the one,” Lily half-shouted, “who let that fucking monster at Alice and Frank, who stood by–”

“He was under _Voldemort’s_ Imperius!”

“That’s what he told you all, is it? And you believed him, over Alice?”

“It’s fucking _Peter_! He came to the DMLE, after, you didn’t see how he looked, you weren’t there to– oh, will you fucking _shut up_ , you disgusting, how dare you laugh? How dare you fucking laugh, you fucking–”

“Both of you, shut up,” Lily said, flatly. Sirius fell abruptly silent, glaring over at her, as Evan went on chuckling, as if her command for silence were the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “Evan.”

“Oh, but it’s so rich,” he gasped, shaking. “ _So_ rich.”

“You know something,” Sirius said, shifting purposefully, trying to wriggle his way closer despite the grasp of Mimsy’s magic holding him carefully away. “You fucking know something, you Death Eater scum, and if you don’t fucking tell us–”

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” Evan cut in. “But you won’t fucking listen, because it’s your fate, isn’t it, not listening?”

“Evan–”

“Black, if you leave this house within the next twenty-four hours, you will die on the wind,” Evan said, crisply, precisely, as if it were his utmost pleasure to convey the macabre news. “But you will leave, won’t you? Because you already know it was Pettigrew. You suspected, after Caradoc Dearborn, you must have. You already know.”

A sudden, strangely tense silence fell.

_Well,_ Lily thought, half-hysterically, still reeling from the fact that this conversation was even happening, _that’s one way to get them both to shut up._

Naturally, it didn’t last.

“No,” Sirius said, forcefully. “He didn’t…”

“The pub,” Evan said, his tone now verging on bored. “The Green Horse, or the Green something. How many people knew?”

“Me,” Sirius said, through gritted teeth. “Me, Remus, J-James… But it doesn’t–”

“Just the four of you,” Evan said, relentlessly, “one of whom was dead, when Dearborn was taken up. And you know where one was, and where the other one was not.”

“No,” Sirius said, again, but his voice had lost all force. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t have, not after, not after James–”

“ _Because_ of Potter, rather,” was the inexorable answer. “Or perhaps, well, it’s not as if there weren’t other events, other sources of stimulus. It was rather a busy year for that.”

“You,” Sirius growled, and Mimsy let out a squeak as he broke loose, the force of his rage tearing through the grip of her magic. “You fucking– if you touched him, if you laid a single finger on Caradoc–”

“On my line, I didn’t,” Evan said, not shrinking back in the least. Though that had to be at least half because Lily had put herself between him and the shivering, shaking body of Sirius, who kept trying to work his way around and past. “Though I didn’t know, till this moment, why on earth I needed to abstain.”

It was no surprise that that last comment, murmured in a manner that was both absent and painfully self-absorbed, ended up enraging Sirius.

“You fucker!” he half-shouted, nearly deafening Lily. “You don’t fucking know–”

“ _Stupefy_ ,” Lily said, wearily, sick, just sick to the gills of all his shouting. She staggered a little, careful to support Sirius’ body properly, to lever his limp frame onto the bed as gently as possible, so that he didn’t bang into anything. “What? He was only going to go on.”

“Er,” Evan said, for it was Evan that had been staring up at her as if she’d just sprouted wings, terrifying ones. “No, that’s, ah. Er. It’s alright.”

“Don’t expect anyone will worry, if he doesn’t go in in a few hours,” she muttered to herself, as she stood back from the bed. “He was certainly drunk enough to call in sick, or to wish he could.” Then she looked down at Evan again, not glaring, not that, not like she was seething internally at his badly-hidden, thoroughly hypocritical disapproval of her knocking out a friend rather than listening to them rant, especially after Evan had just bloody well prophesied their impending death _and_ said, probably quite accurately, that they wouldn’t listen to him. She was just frowning a little, that was all. “So he needs to stay in, then, for the next full day? Twenty-four hours from, er, hang on…”

“Er,” was the hesitant answer, as she stood back from the bed and thought a small, wobbly _Tempus_ into being in her hand, “about that long, if you can manage it.”

It was just shy of two in the morning, which explained half of why Lily felt tired all over again, looking down at Sirius’ slumbering form. _Can you really see it?_ she wanted to ask. _If you_ are _a seer, if you’re not just halfway mad, how can you bear seeing it like this?_ “And you’re sure,” was what she said, without looking at Evan. “You’re sure he won’t listen to you.”

“Yes.” Just that word was more than enough to make Lily imagine it, imagine waking Sirius up and having to listen to his frenzied ranting. Even if Evan hadn’t been here, she knew that Sirius would still have argued with her about Peter, and it mightn’t have ended well. They’d likely have ended up fuming in separate beds, her in her bedroom, him here in the attic, and if he’d taken it into his head to go off after Peter, she wouldn’t have known about it until it was too late. “If you’d rather I left, I–”

“No,” Lily said, decisively. “No, you’re all right for a few hours, yet. I’ll keep him under till you’re off.” And once _that_ happened, she’d report Sirius in as sick, she’d drag Sirius over to Mungo’s to make him talk to Alice, and she’d sit on him physically if that was what it took to keep him from haring off alone after Peter, for answers or revenge. Or she would bloody well go with him herself. “Mimsy, fetch the green cauldron, would you? The smallest one?”

Mimsy was still so distressed that she did not bother to acknowledge the request out loud, just popped away and popped back in, holding up the right cauldron. And then popped away out of sight, possibly to do some soothing weeding in the garden, which was what she tended to do when agitated.

“Right,” Lily said, feeling rather awfully on the spot, and went about the tedious task of force-feeding the slumbering Sirius a carefully measured dose of Crosses and Noughts, a semi-legal, seriously restricted medical potion that she’d been careful never to tell anyone she was brewing, not outright. So long as the potion came into the correct hands in standard, Mungo’s-style vials, and or she offered sealed commercial vials from the Potters’ privately purchased store, no one had ever asked any questions.

A dram now would last the next six hours; she’d have gone for two drams if she weren’t worried about whether the potion’s interaction with her stunner would keep Sirius out for longer than she would have liked. Crosses and Noughts was therapeutic, yes, useful for treating the aftereffects of dark curses, but it was only so useful because a really rather nasty witch in the fifteenth century had invented it to _amplify_ said dark curses.

Luckily, the potion also amplified the effect and duration of several useful healing and stasis spells. Which meant it wasn’t entirely banned from use, and would mean that while Lily might get a funny look from any Order members that found out what exactly she’d used to knock Sirius out, she wouldn’t have them immediately reporting her to the Ministry.

Speaking of the Order… “You need to stay up here,” Lily said, half to Evan, half to Sirius’ slumbering form. “If I need you to clear off in a hurry, Mimsy will pop you to where your wand is, and then off a ways into the forest. Alright?”

“And by ‘staying up here’,” Evan said, very carefully, “you mean my staying here, with Black, while he, er…?”

“No, of course he’s not going to be in here with _you_ , he’d have my head if he found out that I’d left him like that,” Lily said, knowing even as she said it that Sirius would likely be having her head regardless, afterwards, no matter how she explained this little turn of events. From the way Evan was eyeing her, he seemed to be thinking much the same thing, but at least he was polite enough not to actually say it. “He’ll be in my bedroom. Mimsy?”

“Yes, Mistress?” Mimsy was quite obviously still upset; it was Miss, not Mistress, even in front of company, unless she was feeling as if said company needed to be reminded of Mistress’ consequence. Or if, as in this case, she felt she had erred enough that she dare not be too familiar. “What should Mimsy– oh, the door?”

“The blanket,” Lily said, and only went about levitating it once Mimsy had a solid grip on the end nearest the door. It was tricky work, putting a strong levitation charm into _just_ the blanket wandlessly; the more powerful the charm, the more it liked to bleed a bit into everything nearby when cast without a wand, and she couldn’t have that happening unless she wanted to be tying Sirius to the bed for the next few hours to keep him from floating about. “Right, then. Let’s get this done.”

It was very fortunate that she and Mimsy both had experience in manoeuvring limp, floating bodies down and through and around awkward obstacles, experience gained in safe houses and the occasional random hidey-hole. Sirius only got rapped once on the shoulder, and that was at least half the fault of the stupid attic trapdoor, which, when down, made the corridor even more cramped and hard to manoeuvre through.

Then it was down the widening corridor– easy– and into the bedroom, and into the bed. And then halfway back to the attic, de-charmed blanket in hand, Lily’s mind crammed full of plausible excuses and slightly less plausible segues into explaining to Evan that though Sirius slept in her bedroom, he wasn’t sleeping with her in _that_ sense. Or perhaps it would be better to say he wasn’t, and had never been much interested in her, or maybe in women in general, although she was almost sure that wasn’t necessarily true, on account of her remembering having caught Sirius with his hands down Georgie’s robes at least twice.

Before she could so much as tug on the attic trapdoor, though, she felt that half-twinging, half-sneezy feeling that meant someone was trying to Floo in. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, and had to turn around and run down the stairs again, just in case it was someone who’d feel entitled to come up after her if she didn’t show up by the fire. “Coming!”

Luckily enough, it was only Remus whose head bobbed in the flames in the living room hearth, smiling wryly up at her. “Sirius just got in, I take it?”

“You really,” Lily said, glad to have an easy line of conversation, and even gladder that Remus had always been far too polite to Floo all the way in without permission, “ _really_ shouldn’t let him Apparate like that. One of these days, he’ll splinch something.”

“You know what he’d say, though,” Remus said, frowning exaggeratedly. “‘I was thirteen when I learned Apparition–’”

“–and I’ve never failed a jump, blah blah,” Lily finished, not quite able to hold back a grin, despite the situation. Sirius had never put on the lordly manner the way James did, not even for fun; he took pride in being relentlessly crass. But it did come out a bit when he was drunk, and especially when he was drunk and you were trying to tell him he couldn’t do something. “He’s asleep now, anyway. Came in with all his bits, or so it looked like.”

“Right,” Remus said, nodding about as much as he could in his position. “Right.” Now, though he smiled again, he looked strained. “Carver– you know Carver’s his, er, the training group captain?”

“Yeah,” Lily said, tensing. “Is there something…?”

“No, no, nothing urgent, it’s, ah…”

Peter.

“We’re to give statements,” Remus finally said, his amber gaze unreadable. “Tomorrow morning, though, there’s no rush. They’ve, apparently, pinned down a decent enough chunk of the stragglers and the downright stupid, in Dunwoody, to be getting on with.”

“Peter wasn’t there.”

Remus’ sudden, painful smile scored through her. “No,” he said. “Whatever else he is, he’s not stupid.”

Silence. Then: “Come through,” Lily found herself blurting, despite the risk, despite the shrieking voice in the back of her mind that said Sirius was bad enough, that if Remus copped to anything, if she had to potion him as well, neither of them would ever forgive her. “Just come through, we should talk–”

“No.”

“But–”

“No, Lily, it’s not– I can’t be there in the morning, tomorrow, I just can’t.”

“But I don’t think–”

“You know how Sirius will be,” Remus insisted. “He hasn’t asked me yet, but he will. Why didn’t I ever see Peter, when I was down there most of the time, keeping watch–”

“He _knew_ you were down there!”

“He didn’t always know when.”

“Remus–”

“I’ll be by later. Tomorrow, maybe, after the Aurors have given me the third degree.” Which they would, because Remus had switched jobs suspiciously often, before things had heated up enough that they’d all bullied him into moving in with Peter and Sirius and living off them for a bit. The word ‘shiftless’ had only not been applied to whatever file he had at the DMLE out of courtesy to James, a courtesy that did not yet apply to Sirius. “I’ll come by in the evening, and we can hash it out then.”

“Alright,” was all Lily could say. “If you’re sure.”

Remus smiled again. “I’m sure.” Then, after a small, strained silence: “I’d better let you sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah, you too.”

“You’re lucky you can sleep at all, to be honest. It’s a little mad up here in London, I swear there’s been fireworks going off every two minutes.”

“You’re nowhere near the Alleys, though,” Lily said, curious despite herself. “You’d think it’d be concentrated near there.”

“Oh, it’s spread. Ministry cracking down on anyone daft enough to do it that publicly, so…”

“Pity you’re stuck in London. Can’t imagine how you’ll manage to sleep.”

“Ha ha, dying with laughter, good night.”

Then he’d vacated the flames, and Lily forced herself slowly to her feet, thinking she really must do something about the cushioning charm before the hearth. A pillow might be more reliable, if a little silly; a sort of nice, thinnish dark one mightn’t look too out of place…

“Miss?”

“Hmm?” Lily said, turning away from the hearth; she’d been conscious of Mimsy hovering there behind her, doing her own quiet version of pulling on the blood bond between them while the Floo call with Remus wound down. “Is Evan making a pill of himself?”

“No, Miss,” Mimsy said, her head downcast, her hands folded tightly in front of her. Which meant a greater upset, perhaps something not related to this temporary drama with Sirius and Evan. “Although Mr. Rosier is requesting a moment to speak with the Head of House.”

“Really,” Lily said, unable to keep her eyes from narrowing; the dramatic capitalization had come clear across in Mimsy’s tone. “Christ, that’s just what I need.”

“Miss,” Mimsy said, her hands trembling. “Miss, regarding the, the interruption upstairs…”

“It really is all right,” Lily said, emphatically. “Really, Mimsy. I’d have to have told Sirius at _some_ point, if only so he didn’t look an idiot when it came out that I hid Evan here, for however long.”

“Miss,” Mimsy said, almost sharply, “has not understood me.” Oh dear god, she’d fallen out of referring to herself in the third person. Not good. Not good at all. “Miss, I did not mean, I did not think Mr. Sirius would look for you so fast. But I should have been with him, Miss. I failed you.”

“Oh, for– you’re busy, you’re _always_ busy, and he lives here, doesn’t he? There’s no expectation–”

“There is a child, Miss,” Mimsy rushed to say. “An elf child I have kept.”

Sudden, shocked silence, then, as Lily blinked, and then racked her brains for just what one was supposed to say to that. _You could have told me,_ was the only thing she could think of, over and over again, but then, it was only after James’ death that Lily had ever thought a moment about Mimsy’s wages, or about the situation of any house elves at all. She’d assumed so much; she couldn’t be upset at Mimsy for assuming things too.

“The child’s mother,” Mimsy said, still staring down at her tightly folded hands, “is present as well, Miss.”

“Don’t make this for a moment about whether or not you or the child can stay,” Lily hastened to say. “There is no question, none at all, of either of you needing to go, is that understood?”

“But, Miss,” Mimsy said, her voice shaking just a little, “the mother, the mother is _here_ , and she is…”

“No question,” Lily said again, emphatically. “No matter who she is.” She supposed she oughtn’t be surprised that the wizarding world’s rather intriguingly flexible ideals on how witches were just as much allowed to cat around as wizards had somehow not been extended to the beings they had enslaved. “No question at all.”

“But, Miss,” Mimsy said, a bit louder, her little frame trembling, “she is a Malfoy elf, formerly, and–”

“What?”

“She can work, Miss, but the severing has made her slow, and there is the child, and though she is severed from service twice over, these things are not seen the way one wishes, Miss. Not when the former family is great, and they are looking for their elves–”

“Wait,” Lily said, flushing just a little. “You’re, you’re telling me _you_ aren’t the mother?”

Mimsy, who had been pressing her hands together ever more tightly, looked up at Lily as if she had announced that the house they were standing in was made of cheese. “Miss,” and that was very nearly her normal, aggressively prim tone, “surely Miss would have noticed if Mimsy were mothering.”

“I– I thought you meant, well, you know, that there _would be_ a child,” was all Lily could say to that. “I didn’t, well, I know if I were the one having to tell someone, I’d have been almost as, as indirect.” Though that was rather a thin excuse for her misunderstanding, when she looked back on the precise words Mimsy had used. “Oh, this just isn’t my day, is it?”

“Miss? They can stay, mother and child, for some time?”

“It’s your shed,” was all Lily could say, dryly. “Oh wait, would there even be enough space, with the yarrow drying in there?” And then they were a solid half hour arguing and shifting things about in the pantry and arguing some more, until Mimsy finally agreed that perhaps the fact that Lily had burned down Malfoy Manor was enough to signify that she was prepared to brave possible blood feud with the Malfoys over hiding a pair of house elves they had gifted into service at Dunwoody.

“It’s only, Miss, that it’s very serious, so very serious, to be appropriating another family’s elf,” Mimsy said, finally. “Mimsy knows it is not very likely that the Malfoys will think to look to blame Mistress when they cannot find their elves, but Mimsy worries, still.”

“Mimsy, I’m hiding a Death Eater in my attic,” Lily huffed, nudging a stack of tins over with a careful wave of her hand, “and I knocked an Auror unconscious and force-fed him a restricted potion to keep him from bleating about it.”

“Mr. Sirius is only an Auror in training, Miss.”

“They’d still throw the bloody book at me over it, if they found it out,” Lily muttered. “What’s two elves, on top of that? Two runaway elves that technically aren’t even on my property.”

“It _is_ still your property, Miss,” was Mimsy’s low, rebellious response. “Miss is merely leasing the use to Mimsy.”

Finally, it was allowed that the cleared space behind the slightly shimmery illusionary side wall of the pantry was fit for Mimsy’s exclusive use, and could now thus be added to the leasing contract. Five minutes later, they were each signing the hasty new addendum, which Lily had dashed out in an atrociously sloppy hand. Which was something to owl her lawyers about in future, so she could get them to do up a more standard, formal version that would be slightly more likely to stand up in court.

Five more minutes later, after Mimsy had folded away her copy of the addendum, and was bustling about rearranging the pantry to her own liking, Lily caught herself folding and refolding the original addendum and realized she was stalling. “Can I have some of the roast for a sandwich or two? It’s not being put by for anything, is it?”

“Mimsy will bring up sandwiches in a few moments, if Miss would like to feed Mr. Rosier,” was Mimsy’s slightly distracted response. And then, more firmly, when Lily made a protesting noise: “The Head of House does not crowd her hands with food, Miss, not while hearing petition. It is not done.”

‘Not done’ pronounced in the same tones as anything someone might have said in response to the idea of answering a royal summons while wearing only a hat. “Oh, fine,” Lily muttered, tucking the folded addendum into her left robe pocket, the one that didn’t still have dried, slightly sticky traces of fire starter potion in it. “Just the sandwiches, though, not a whole blasted tea.”

“Mimsy would never dream of serving Mr. Rosier in ceremony without his petition being granted,” was the amused, but rather sniffy reply. “Mimsy is in doubts she will be called to serve sandwiches at all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lily could not help but demand, feeling herself start to stiffen. Then she saw the clear confusion on Mimsy’s face, and relaxed a little, internally berating herself for jumping to conclusions, for imagining some sort of sly censure beneath Mimsy’s innocently meant comment. “I just, I’m sorry for snapping, it’s just this day. I meant, well, what makes you think I won’t call for sandwiches?”

“It is only that Mr. Rosier has a reputation, Miss,” was what Mimsy said next. “He was a shame to his house, I heard, again and again.” Then, as Lily frowned, not at all sure she wanted to know precisely what Evan could have done back then, that would have made even his awful family ashamed of him, Mimsy added: “He was a child that made work, Miss, setting fires and the like.”

Lily blinked. “Oh,” she said, trying not to sound too relieved. “Fires, eh? He was always like that at school, if not quite _that_ brazen.” Then she blinked again, thinking, and couldn’t help but ask: “He didn’t– did they say anyone was ever hurt, when he…?”

“A family portrait was the very worst of it, Miss, as far as Mimsy knows,” was the matter-of-fact answer. “Strange that he should fear fire so, when he has long been setting it.”

“Well,” Lily said, thinking back to the way Evan had looked, as he begged her not to kill him, “that was _his_ fire, all those years. Not mine.” Not the kind of fire that would eat away at you till there was nothing left, till you were a dark smear of ash and burned-off magic. “I’ll call you when I need the sandwiches, Mimsy.” Then she turned around and marched for the kitchen door, finally ready to go up, to face Evan in the attic once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would have thought that of all the chapters to be earlyish to get posted, it wouldn't be this one. 
> 
> Don't be alarmed if you see the estimated chapter count go up by one in future; I've been doing some hasty surgery on these last three chapters of the fic to firm things up, and I've ended up adding enough to the last chapter that I might just need to split it in two.


	7. evening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new or re-emphasized warnings here, other than for **full fathom id**. Hope you enjoy...

## evening

It should have felt more awkward to go tugging down the attic trapdoor again, so soon after she’d left, but Lily, bolstered by an obvious reason to be closeted with Evan again, found herself hastening up the fold-out ladder with alacrity.

When she emerged into the attic, Evan was waiting for her in what she could not help but think of as state, though he had put off his robes and replaced them with a pale, somewhat wrinkled shirt that matched all too well with his equally wrinkled breeches. It was something in his posture, something in the way his hands were folded in his lap as he sat, stiff-backed, on the bed. The moment she came off the final step of the trapdoor, he rose, his hands still folded before him, and gave her a short, fluid bow of acknowledgement. “Lady Potter,” he murmured. “How good of you to honour my request.”

“Speak,” Lily said, simply, because she knew just enough of the proprieties of the whole formal petition dance that she felt horribly unable to engage in it with someone who was clearly prepared to treat the matter seriously. It hadn’t been so bad at the funeral, where all she’d been required to do was murmur thanks to everyone’s supposedly heartfelt condolences, and not bow too deeply to anyone. Here and now, in the confines of her own home, all she could think was that she’d much rather come off a little curt than look an idiot for saying the wrong thing. “Sit, if you like.”

“You are too gracious,” Evan said, and went on standing, though he let both hands relax to his sides. “It is, I know, highly irregular of me to raise such a delicate matter at such an inconvenient time, but I find myself forced to speak.”

“Right,” Lily said, wishing he would just get on with it. “I’m listening.”

He looked at her, then, instead of at the bare wooden boards of the floor between them, or, as was polite, at the air above her left shoulder– that last fact being something she remembered, suddenly, from a puzzling chapter in _Wizardly Etiquette_ , where the author had insisted that there existed long-held habits and unspoken rules that governed the prudent place for one’s gaze to rest while in conversation.

_Eyes,_ the author had said, _are the window to the mind,_ which she had dismissed as some odd sort of misprint, especially since the author followed that proclamation by declaring that it was positively unheard of for unwed wizards and witches to meet each others’ eyes. Hogwarts, Lily had thought, wryly, must have been pencilled in as the great exception, for there had always been a great deal of significant looks and glances exchanged by everyone, and much as McGonagall had often made sharp remarks to jolt people back into paying attention in class, Lily could never remember hearing her being the least bit scandalized by how half the class seemed to go a little distracted before the Yule Ball, or in the week surrounding Valentine’s Day.

Just now, Evan’s eyes were indeed the window to his mind, and to his heart. When he came a small step forward and went to his knees before her, it felt natural. Shocking, but entirely understandable, that a man that would look at her that way would want to– to offer himself.

He was a little embarrassed, doing it. There was something in the way he bowed his head and refused to meet her gaze that told her that this extra, faintly alarming obeisance wasn’t strictly necessary to the form of whatever pureblood formality this was. And it was one of those: his silence, and his grace as he knelt, fairly shouted it.

“Would it,” Evan said, almost too quietly for her to hear him, “greatly displease you, my lady, were I to offer for your hand?”

“Er,” Lily said, then coughed, desperately, because it once again wasn’t her fucking day, and she wished she could have a prayer of pretending that she hadn’t understood him, that she wasn’t sure what he meant. But of course Evan would be direct, maddeningly so, when he was after something he wanted. “I– you don’t–”

He was no longer embarrassed, or at least, not too embarrassed to look up, snaring her panicky gaze with his. “I am aware,” Evan murmured, “that I am not the best choice of grooms.” Understatement of the fucking century. “I am aware that this is also, perhaps, precisely the worst time for my suit.”

Lily could nearly not breathe. _‘The worst time,’ indeed,_ she thought to herself, just to have something else in her mind, something that wasn’t the terror and wonderment of knowing bone-deep that Evan Rosier, former Death Eater, probable madman, and probable Seer, was deadly serious about her. She forced herself to take a breath, and another, and let it out. And then say, quietly: “You are utterly insane.”

Evan, his gaze now very properly fixed on her feet, broke into one of his sudden, maddening smiles. “Yes,” he breathed. Yet, though he went on smiling as he spoke, his voice trembled. “I know I’ve no right to ask.”

“No,” Lily said, unable to help herself. “No, you definitely don’t.” Tears started in her eyes; annoyed, she dashed them away with a shaking hand. “Why–”

“You do know you needn’t say yes,” Evan said, at the same time, then stopped, looking up at her, his expression stricken. “Don’t _cry_ …”

“I’m not,” she muttered, which only meant that he, scowling, got right back to his feet and dragged her into his arms. “I just, I don’t…”

“You need not explain,” he said, fiercely. “Even if I’d not wronged you, it’s– I know that marrying again, I know it mightn’t be to your taste, after all that’s happened.”

Tears filled her eyes again, even as she burst into low, unwilling laughter. “I wouldn’t marry me, if I were you,” she sputtered. “The last…” She couldn’t finish that morbid joke. Crying, she just shook there, against him, for one long, awful moment. And then said, reaching up to wipe her eyes: “Be serious. You know it wouldn’t work, our marrying each other.”

And then, when he said nothing to that: “Evan. _It wouldn’t fucking work._ ”

Somehow, the quietly mutinous, or perhaps carefully persuasive response she’d been expecting did not materialize. Sighing, he tightened the press of his arms around her and said, “I know.”

Lily didn’t know what to say to that, at first, what on earth would be a match for that quiet, damning acceptance. “Then why? Why even bother asking, when–” when he knew, just as she did, that the most they could get away with was some careful public front of strained cordiality, to mask the lust-fuelled truth of their connection. “I just, you’ve never said, before, that you wanted…”

“How could I?” And now, of course, was when he chose to pull back a little ways from her, his hands skimming down the sides of her arms. “I was marked.”

“And before that?” Lily asked, her voice low and hard. “What about–Christ, I don’t even know why I ask,” she muttered, remembering how it had been between them, how they had steered clear of discussing everything but the most mundane things. “You wanted in me, and you were already getting that, weren’t you? Mark or no mark.”

“Don’t make it about that,” Evan said, his grip tightening on her arms. “Look, just– _listen_. If we had run before I was marked, we would have had no money. No qualifications. Nowhere safe to go.” All unpleasantly true, perhaps save for that last point, but even as Lily opened her mouth to argue, Evan was already speaking again, his words rushed, his tone unsteady. “You’ll want to know if I saw some, some sign, but I didn’t. I didn’t need to look, because I knew. I know what my family is like; I know what they’re capable of. I’m not at all sure we could even have got away, got out of the country.”

He paused, then, his desperate gaze seeking hers, and the most she could do was shake her head and look away. _Dumbledore would have helped,_ she thought, but did not, could not say. He very well might have, but it was anyone’s guess how enthusiastic he’d have been about it, about devoting resources to hiding two young, essentially useless runaways.

If they had wanted to stay and fight, if Evan had decided to follow in Sirius’ footsteps… But at the time he ran from his family, Sirius had been, to put it bluntly, utterly expendable. His branch of the Blacks had had their obedient spare; they had not mourned his defection for even a moment. The Rosiers, though, had only the one heir, and angry as they would have been at his deliberate, rebellious flight, they would still have searched for him. They would have done anything to get him back.

“If we were _very_ lucky,” Evan finally said, his tone light, his expression hollow, “we might’ve dodged my parents entirely. We might have had a year or two together before anyone else found us. Before my other relatives, the distaff line in Spain, put us both in our graves.”

“That’s not–” she began to say, then stopped, seeing his stubborn, but somehow tired expression. _That’s not possible_ , she’d wanted to say, even though the few garbled tales of pureblood family feuds that had floated across her view now and again told her it was all too possible. “Why would they do that?”

“Because I’m the sole heir of the main line, and if we’d had any children, they could always return to claim the Rosier estate,” was his calmly stated answer. “If Voldemort still lived, both sides of the family would have sought his blessing to pursue me. And if he hadn’t given it, or if, as now, he was unable to…” Evan shrugged. “Someone would have come for us anyway.”

Silence, then, a strained, uncomfortable one. “And you’re asking me now,” Lily couldn’t help but say, in a voice that shook a little, from frustration and a sort of morbid amusement, “to think of marrying into that.”

Evan leaned in toward her. “I may have somewhat understated,” he said, his tone dry, his gaze warm, “just how terrible of a groom I would make.” When she rolled her eyes, he leaned in a bit more, his hands sliding around to the middle of her back. “As things currently are, the Spanish branch will probably settle for getting father and I thoroughly disinherited– it’s irrevocable, you see, when the heirs are both present and, shall I say, extremely lacking in public character.”

“Really,” Lily muttered, unable to keep from shivering as he stroked his hand up and down her back. “You think they’d be satisfied with just that?”

“They would be extremely pleased with themselves,” he said. “Probably, my marrying you would please them even more, if only for the additional scandal. Oh, how they’d laugh to see me fallen so low, grown desperate enough to wed a muggleborn for her money– money that, of course, would be very well tied up, and entirely out of my reach.”

“How very bloody reassuring.”

“As I said before,” Evan murmured, his breath warm against her cheek, his wicked smile clear in his low tone, “you _can_ turn me down.”

The marriage, he clearly meant. His mouth was something else again, hot and wet and open to hers. They kissed slowly, tasting each other, then feverishly, exchanging every other breath, wound up together, their bodies pressing closer and closer.

Then, because they were that close, Lily couldn’t help but hear it when Evan’s stomach rumbled. “Christ,” she said, pulling a little away. “I completely forgot. Mimsy?”

“There’s no need–”

“You have to eat at _some_ point.”

“What I mean is,” Evan said, patting himself here and there, and then finally producing, from a tightly buttoned pocket near the hem of the left leg of his breeches, a padded square that he promptly enlarged into a decently sized satchel. “What I mean, is that I came prepared. All sorts, all useful, and I always have a bit of Gowers’–”

“Gowley’s.”

“Gowley’s Rehydration Serum,” he said, amiably, having already hunted up the fat little vial to display to her. “I’ve really never understood why it’s called that, when it does so much more.”

“Gowley was a drunk,” Lily said, unable to keep from taking the satchel and poking about in it. “Or at least, that’s what I always thought.”

“So you see,” Evan said, giving her a certain smug look as he twisted off the cork, “there’s no need to worry yourself about feeding me.”

“Don’t take it,” she said, frowning as she sorted through the other potions he had nestled into the bag, each in its own snug little pocket. She wasn’t precisely jealous of how much Blood Replenisher he seemed to think he needed to carry, though seeing those five glittering vials couldn’t help but annoy her a little, when she’d often tied herself in knots trying to keep Order members in possession of one each for their emergency kits. The satchel, on the other hand… “If I know Mimsy, she’s already made your sandwiches, and she’ll be popping in with a decked-out tray in a minute, and she _will_ stay to watch you eat at least one.”

Evan, who had been watching her, cork and vial held ready, visibly drooped. “Oh,” he said, now twisting the cork back in with slow, sullen movements, “fine, then.”

“You’d only bring it all up tomorrow anyway,” Lily said, moving over to sit on the bed, still occupied in fingering the lovely, smooth leather of the interior pockets of his satchel. She couldn’t quite figure out how they had been charmed to size themselves to whatever vial you put into them; the leather didn’t try to tighten around her fingers, and didn’t have that odd, sideways-feeling mental hum of a fully charmed object. “Gowley’s doesn’t play at all well with Veritaserum, remember?”

“It would all have run through me by tomorrow,” was Evan’s defensive answer. “I was only going to have a sip or two, you know, to tide me over.” Somehow, though he said that last sentence politely, the weight of his gaze made her very aware of what he would rather have been doing, now, rather than moving to stand opposite her while they both waited for Mimsy to appear. “It’s the stitching, by the way, that’s charmed.”

“Huh. Fiddly.”

“You desire my satchel, I see.”

“No,” Lily said, regretfully. “It’d be far too awkward; there’s no carrying strap.”

“Oh, that’s an easy fix; it used to have a strap. You see these dangly bits…” He leaned in over her, stroking the leather in the appropriate location, his gaze teasing. “No, I didn’t cut off the old one, you needn’t give me that look. The old strap was attached, though, there and there, I remember there being some fussy knotwork about it. Daresay there are charms for that.”

“So,” she couldn’t help but say, mock-seriously, “you’re trying to bribe me with your satchel as, what, your dowry?”

“ _If_ we were to be married, it would be a very early wedding gift,” Evan murmured, going to his knees before her. “Wizards– and witches– don’t do dowries.”

“You…” Lily said, breathlessly, because he’d come in close and slipped his hand up her robes, and was trailing it up the inside of her thigh. “Mimsy will be here any second. We can’t…”

“I haven’t tasted you in a long, long time,” was the low answer. “I really wish you hadn’t called her.”

“We can– after–”

“I don’t know,” Evan said, his fingers rubbing against her, teasing her through the thin, dampening material of her knickers, “that I want to wait.”

Naturally, that was when Mimsy popped in– loudly, the noise of her apparition startling in the tense, expectant hush that had settled around them. “Miss!”

Evan, who Lily had half expected, half wanted to be brazen enough to keep going, immediately withdrew his hand, moving so smoothly and surely that you’d have to have been watching him intently to spot just where his hand had been.

Flushing, Lily looked over at Mimsy as calmly as she could, as if there was nothing at all odd about Evan kneeling before her, his solid frame pressed between her knees. Then she went still, noticing all at once that Mimsy was not just confusingly empty-handed, she was also not wringing her hands, not the way Lily would have expected. She was shaking with a fine, nearly unnoticeable tremor, and her hands were folded formally before her.

“Miss,” she said, in a voice tight with fear, “the Aurors are here.”

* * *

The Aurors that stood, neatly clustered in three pairs, by the rather rickety gate in the wall that separated the front lawn from the lane, were not all known to Lily. Their wandlight cast strange shadows, and made it take a moment to identify the short, broad-shouldered, no-nonsense sort at the very back as Auror-Captain Carver. The thinnish, blinking man beside Auror Carver was most likely Auror Hayfew, and the tall, frowning woman at the very front, was probably Auror Morrison, bracketed by three other, younger Aurors Lily could not immediately place.

“Lady Potter,” one of them called out, his voice rich with impatience, the moment Lily stepped out of her front door, “begging your pardon for intrusion at this hour, but it’s urgent that we speak with Auror Black immediately.”

_Well,_ Lily thought, gibbering inside, _at least it’s not about the elves I’m hiding, or about the Death Eater that just proposed to me._ Though, if she did as they said, and went and roused Sirius, their untimely little visit would quickly become all about said Death Eater in short, shouty order. “He’s well out of it,” she called back. “Is it about Peter? If it is, I might be able to help.”

Auror Morrison gave her a quelling look. The man beside her– not the one that had spoken– coughed, delicately, and shook his head. “I’m afraid,” he said, his tone warm but firm, and oddly familiar, “it isn’t in our remit to discuss DMLE business with anyone other than Auror Black. You understand, of course, Lady Potter.”

“Bailey?” Lily couldn’t help but say. “It’s never Will Bailey, is it?”

“No, ma’am, I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for my younger brother,” Bailey said– Robert Bailey, it had to be, then, if it wasn’t Will. She’d have known that smooth, posh, unctuous tone anywhere, after weathering it for two straight years in the Prefects’ Room, a poky little room a floor above the professors’ lounge, where patrol assignments were fought over, and blame and recrimination and complaints made the rounds whenever someone was judged to have taken points unfairly. “And I am sorry to rush you, but we are somewhat on the clock.”

“Right,” Lily said, through numb, leaden lips. “Right.” She’d only been able to bring herself to walk a step or two toward them; as she hesitated on the front step, she knew they had to be wondering at it, wondering at how nervous she probably looked. She couldn’t– if she went back in, and came out again, and wrung her hands about how she was sorry, but she hadn’t managed to wake Sirius, she knew what would happen next. One of them would insist on coming in, on making sure he was truly unable to be roused.

She had to do something. Something drastic.

“Lady Potter?” That was Carver, now, his gruff, familiar voice strangely loud against the nighttime hush that surrounded them. “Is everything all right?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve– I have someone here.” She wasn’t sure how she sounded. She had meant to sound calm, but from the way all the Aurors came alert, she had failed spectacularly at it. “Someone who sought sanctuary.”

“Lady Potter,” Morrison said, her voice low and calm, “if you feel unsafe, you may simply nod at us. He won’t hear you.”

_For fuck’s sake,_ Lily thought, wildly. _If that’s what they think is going on, they won’t even wait for Evan to say anything about surrendering, they’ll just kill him._

“It wasn’t like that,” she made herself say, loudly, her tone as sharp and as decisive as she could make it. “I took his wand, and I knocked him out before I brought him inside. I wouldn’t have taken him in, otherwise.” All even strictly true. “I owe him a couple life debts, so I couldn’t– look, I don’t care if you believe me, I don’t care if you think he’s puppeting me as we speak, non-lethal spells only. I’ll be damned if I let the debts transfer up to his fucking family.”

Which they technically would, even though she hadn’t yet formally sworn to the debts in public. Some branch of the Rosiers would come calling about it anyway if Evan died, _especially_ if he died in Auror custody; though they’d sue the DMLE, they would also try and bring her into it, arguing that she owed the family an obligation for failing to discharge her honourable duty. Never mind the fact that he was a Death Eater, or that she might still be brought up on charges for harbouring him: life debts, once publicly claimed, _must_ be honoured.

Though, from the dour, disbelieving looks all the Aurors were aiming her way, if they _did_ end up killing Evan, they’d be all too happy to pretend they’d never even heard her claim any such debt. Probably, they’d say they’d been convinced he had simply been forcing her to parrot a devious lie to try and save his life.

“Non-lethal spells only,” Lily ground out. “Am I understood?”

Carver let out a short, angry sigh. “Fine. Bring him out.”

“Sir,” one of the younger Aurors said, “sir, this surely isn’t–”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“But, sir,” Auror Morrison said, almost too lowly to be heard, “if it’s Malfoy–”

“It isn’t Malfoy,” Lily called out, to stop that line of argument, “and it isn’t Peter, either.” Malfoy, she would simply have burned on sight; Peter, trapped by the newest ward she’d laid down hours earlier, would eventually have gone the same way, after Alice and everyone else from the Order were done with him. She couldn’t say that, though, not if she wanted to keep them from wanting to take her in, so she just steeled herself and said: “It’s Evan Rosier.”

She’d expected some surprise, some sort of reaction. That James– that James had, after speaking to her, deliberately glossed over the precise details of her capture at work, didn’t mean that the Aurors had no other cause for an ill opinion of Evan. Still, she hadn’t at all expected the Aurors, as one, to turn and– in almost all cases– literally gape at her.

Carver was the only one of them whose mouth did not fall open, but he looked like the effort to keep it from doing so was costing him. “Did you say Evan Rosier?” he asked. And then, when she gave him a curt nod: “You owe Evan Rosier a life debt?”

“Believe me,” Lily said, with a strained smile, “it certainly–” _wasn’t my idea,_ she’d planned to say, only to pause and scream at herself, internally, because with how tense everything was, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if one of the staring Aurors decided that she was trying desperately to let them know that it really wasn’t her idea. “It’s not something I’m happy about,” she said, instead.

“And Sirius allowed this,” Carver said, slowly. “Allowed you to offer Evan Rosier sanctuary.”

Christ, she’d half forgotten about Sirius. And now that she remembered him, she really didn’t want to think about just how enthusiastic he might have been at work, on the general idea of how much of a kicking certain specific Death Eaters deserved. “Can I just fucking bring him out? Can I just do that?” When no one said anything, she turned around and went back up to the door, pulling it open an extra inch. “Mr. Rosier’s wand, Mimsy, if you would.”

“Yes, Mistress,” was the low, relieved answer, followed by a louder than usual departing pop. And no wonder; they weren’t out of the woods just yet, and likely wouldn’t be out of said woods until she’d also got Sirius up for them and let him finish shouting at her. “Here, Mistress.”

Lily took the wand from Mimsy’s shaking hands and turned back toward the Aurors, holding it deliberately before the worn handle, so it was obvious that she wasn’t about to use it to cast. Then she remembered that she didn’t have _her_ wand– Christ, could it still be down in the lab? She went wandless for so many things these days that she had to keep conscious track of where she left her wand; she only really bothered making sure she was armed with it when she went out, and she hadn’t meant to go out till this whole thorny situation had been sorted out.

Wafting the wand over to the Aurors wandlessly was an option, yes, but a decidedly unwise one. She didn’t want them to be twitchy, to be wondering what else she could do without a wand. “I’m going to come a little closer,” she called out. “I don’t think I can make the toss, if I don’t. Is that all right?”

“That will be acceptable, yes,” Bailey said, his normally smooth tone tight with strain.

Moments passed as Lily picked her way up the narrow path that crossed her darkened front lawn, still holding the wand carefully in the middle. Despite the thick, half-forgotten weight of the wards pressing on her as she walked forward, she felt horribly exposed, horribly aware that she was putting herself in easy range for disabling spells. Some of which would fizzle when they crossed the ward boundary, but only some. “Here,” she said, once she judged she was close enough. “Captain Carver.”

The toss went off a little wildly; she was much too used to the shape and weight of filled potions sacs. But the wand didn’t go so high over Carver’s head that he wouldn’t have been able to snatch it up with his hand. Naturally, he used a spell instead, too cautious to touch anything presented to him by a suspicious person.

Which was clearly the category Lily had been slotted into, for all that he gave her a calm, acknowledging nod, and said: “I assume Mr. Rosier will be next…?”

“Yes,” Lily said, and turned around and beckoned meaningfully at Mimsy. She knew she should call out to her, should say something cool and commanding and not at all afraid about bringing Evan down here, but she couldn’t. She simply couldn’t.

Mimsy nodded in the distance, and disappeared with a near-silent pop. Lily crossed her arms in front of her and waited, trying to keep her hands from curling into nervous fists.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Evan–

Alright, she didn’t trust him. She simply couldn’t trust that, in the moments while she hurried out of the attic and down the stairs and came out to talk to the Aurors, Evan had kept up the dead-eyed composure he’d assumed the moment Mimsy had popped in with her terribly unwelcome news. _Please don’t let him have gone,_ she thought, desperately. _Please don’t let him have left me alone with this._

It felt an age before Mimsy reappeared on the front step of the house, Evan holding her hand, stooping slightly to do so. He looked ridiculous, his flat, unsmiling calm not at all matching his sloppy, half-dressed appearance, or the way Mimsy’s free hand was curling and uncurling restlessly, or her nervous expression, or the white-knuckled grip she had on his hand. “Mistress, I have brought Mr. Rosier,” she called out, her voice thin with anxiety. “Shall I bring him closer?”

Mimsy did not want to come any closer, and yet she offered.

“Leave him there,” Lily said. “You were working in the kitchen, before, weren’t you? Go back to that.”

Mimsy lingered for one, silent moment, then let go of Evan’s hand. “Yes, Miss,” she whispered, and was gone.

Lily, moving smoothly, turned around again, ignoring the flinch that went through the Aurors as she did it. “Right,” she said, gesturing vaguely backward. “Evan Rosier, as requested.”

Silence set in, a thick, chokingly tense one that seemed to claw at her. Lily ached to see what Evan’s current expression was, but could not; she had turned her back on him deliberately. Now, she felt as if turning around again, or even just looking back over her shoulder, might set something off.

“And Auror Black?” Carver said, his gruff voice showing no sign of the tension evident in his shadowed, stocky frame. “I understood that you’d fetch him as well, Lady Potter.”

“In a minute,” Lily said, turning slightly, just enough that she could see Evan without straining too much. “Evan.” She couldn’t call him ‘Rosier’ for this, she couldn’t bear it, so she made her voice low and hard as she spoke his name. Made her tone distinctly commanding. “Come.”

He didn’t hesitate to obey. He came up the path, walking slowly, his gaze mostly on the darkened ground, his hands held up and apart before him. As he approached where she stood, he slowed, veering away from her slightly, picking his way over the lawn to keep a small, deliberate distance between them.

When he stopped level with her, she expected him to turn his head to look at her, anticipating further orders. She didn’t expect that, when she simply nodded– meaning him to stay where he was, while she further reassured the Aurors– he would drop dramatically to his knees, his hands still held up, his knees hitting the grass with an audible thud.

The Aurors spread and drew as one, then stopped short of casting, their wands shaking, the formerly steady wandlight of one of them now abruptly extinguished. Lily froze, her hand halfway to her pocket, and had to force herself to relax. To lower her hand. To breathe, while Carver lit his wand with a sharp flick, and Morrison and Bailey and Hayfew and the two others glared daggers at Evan’s humbly kneeling form.

Somehow, she managed to speak. “Are you _trying_ ,” she said, through gritted teeth, “to get your fucking idiot arse killed?”

She wasn’t surprised that he said nothing, that he simply bowed his head and held his hands a little higher. That, from the way his jaw had tensed, he was trying to keep from smiling. Smiling, before his certain imprisonment, if not his death.

“Bastard,” Lily muttered, unable to help herself. Then: “is it all right if I just leave him here, while I get Sirius up?”

“I would much prefer,” Carver said, “that you left him directly in our custody, if you plan to go back inside. If he moves–”

“He won’t move,” Lily interjected. “Will you, Evan?”

“I swear,” he said, his voice low and calm and just a little smug, “on my life and on my blood, that I shall not try to escape from these grounds before or after I am in your custody, Auror-Captain Carver.” And then he waved his left hand a trifle, frowning slightly, as a thin, faintly glowing line cut itself into the centre of his palm. “On my life, I do swear.”

Blood dripped, slowly, hissing where it struck the grass. It was too dark to see if it had left no stain, but Lily would bet her life that it hadn’t. There was a familiar smell of burning copper in the air, now, much like the one that had arose when Lily had walked the grounds of this house barefoot and bleeding. Much like the smell that clung to her robes when she’d just finished a batch of fire starter.

“Well, then,” Carver said, his voice sounding ever so slightly strangled. “Lady Potter?”

“I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes,” Lily said. “Ten, maybe fifteen at most.” She itched to Apparate directly to Sirius’ bedside; instead, she walked quickly, but not too quickly, until she’d gotten through the front door again and knew herself to be out of sight, and then she ran, pell-mell, down to the lab.

Antidote. Sobriety Solution. Strengthener. Ginger root, just in case he came up sick; ginger wouldn’t interfere with anything in all the active potions.

Upstairs, then, at a run. She didn’t think of Apparating until she was nearly at her bedroom door, and then could have kicked herself for the precious extra minutes wasted, until she was bending over Sirius and very carefully sprinkling on the antidote, moving aside his robes here and there so she could get it on his skin.

Then, as a shiver went through him, she couldn’t help but think that if she were the Aurors downstairs, the first thing she’d have done when she disappeared into the house was put up a wide-ranging Anti-Apparition ward, just in case. The fresher the ward, the more likely the caster would feel when it was being tried, and that–

Sirius coughed. Heaved, mightily, his hands stirring, gripping weakly at the duvet that partially covered him.

“Drink,” Lily said, pitching her voice to be that mixture of low and soothing and commanding that had always served her well in these situations. Sirius grunted, coughed, and drank deeply of the Sobriety Solution.

She knew the moment his senses came back to him. He’d had all the Sobriety, and about half of the Strengthening Solution, and she’d decided to hold the other half back– it was possible to give too much, and she very much wanted him to be calm and strong rather than trembling with nervous energy when he went off with the other Aurors. She set the half-empty vial on the side table, balancing it carefully, and then picked up the ginger she’d brought up in its little twist of paper, and when she turned her attention back to Sirius, she found that he had gone very still, and was looking at her out of half-lidded eyes.

Watching, perhaps, for signs of an Imperius. Or, more likely, for a moment of true inattention, a moment he could seize on, and use to turn the tables against her.

“The Aurors are waiting for you outside,” Lily said, instead of anything like an apology, one which she knew, just _knew_ , from looking at Sirius, that he would not believe. “Rosier’s outside as well, waiting on his knees to be taken up. Because of course he couldn’t just surrender on his feet, he had to make a fucking show of going on his knees.”

“Outside?” Sirius said, coolly. “Outside that door, you mean?”

“He’s on the front lawn,” Lily snapped, though she knew she didn’t deserve to, didn’t deserve to be at all defensive about not being believed. “Carver and the others are, as well. You can go take a look.”

Sirius simply looked at her for a moment, then, moving far more smoothly than she would have expected, sloughed aside the duvet and levered himself up out of bed, and went right to the window, to twitch aside the curtains and look out on the front lawn.

And then, in a swift, jerky motion, he opened the window and looked down, and let out a loud whoop. “What’s this?” he called out. “Look at you lot, all lined up, waiting on my pleasure. Well, never fear; I’ll be right down.” And then Sirius pulled his head and shoulders back in, straightening, turning back toward her with one of his blandest smiles, his gaze cold and calculating. “I assume you have my wand.”

Flushing, Lily waved a hand to summon it from the chest of drawers near the door, the one she and James had charmed to open only to them just after they’d moved in. It had been one of those lazy-day experiments, something they’d done and never quite got round to undoing, even after Mimsy came on and complained that the drawers were crotchety with her. “Here.”

Sirius didn’t _look_ any more relaxed when she waved his wand into his outstretched hand, but it was as if an extra, unnamed tension went out of the air between them. “Right,” he said. “ _Finite Incantatem._ ” Pointing right at her, of course, the spell pronounced with the proper force to lift nearly anything. “Feeling better?”

Lily didn’t know what on earth to do. What to say. In the end, all she managed was a shaky, tired, “I’m not spelled, Sirius.” And then, as he stared at her, uncomprehendingly: “I’m… I’m sorry. I was going to get you up, after he’d left.” Whenever that would have been. “I’m sorry.”

“Last I remember it,” Sirius said, each word distinct, “last I remember seeing him, before today–”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t, I’m not sure you _do_ know, that’s the fucking problem! Lily, he raped you _again_! How am I, how can you apologize? How can you say you’re not bloody spelled, when I saw you, however many hours ago, looking– you think I don’t know how you look, after a fuck?”

Lily froze. She had not been expecting– she hadn’t thought Sirius would notice. Or that if he had, it had been swept away in all his rage at Evan. Looking at Sirius now, she knew the proper thing to do to make her betrayal make sense to him was to say the thing she’d been dreading having to explain to anyone, and she knew, with an awful, sinking feeling, that there was no way Sirius wouldn’t take it badly. Not when it was coming out like this.

Still, she had to try. “I can explain today,” she said, and hated the way Sirius stiffened, his eyes flashing, his mouth already opening to disagree before she’d even got to it. “No, not whatever bollocks you’re thinking of, I mean I– I mean that, you think there’s no way I would ever have agreed, to anything, but that’s because you don’t know that back in school, he and I used to see each other. For that.”

“In school,” Sirius repeated, as he turned away a little, and began patting himself down. “Why am I all damp?”

“Antidote to Crosses and Noughts; a _Scourgify_ will sort it,” Lily said, hesitantly, feeling horribly relieved that all Sirius did in reaction to that was to frown a little harder down at his robes. “Here, I can–”

“No, thanks,” Sirius said, already casting it, his expression one of more deadly concentration than that simple spell demanded. “So. Since school, this has been happening.”

For a long, wild moment, Lily yearned, just _yearned_ to hit him. It was clear from the way that he’d said ‘this’ that he was thinking of– was brooding on the awful night she’d been taken, was drawing an unpleasant line from here to there and then all the way back to when they were all in school. She hadn’t wanted to mention what happened when Evan took her that night, not yet, not without context, and yet, here Sirius was, reshaping the context to suit himself. “You’re not fucking hearing me,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “It hasn’t, nothing’s been _happening_ , for goodness’ sake. I fucked him back then because I was an idiot; I fucked him last night because why not. Because the war’s over, and I wanted a shag. You can’t keep thinking–”

“ _Accio_ broom,” Sirius said, like he hadn’t been at all paying attention. Like he was checking off an important list, a list that perhaps led to him going out the window and coming down on Evan like an avenging angel. “So. Let me guess, he comes in, he looks awful, he needs you to take care of him,” and of course he laid searing, sarcastic emphasis on the words _take care_ , so that Lily could hardly bear to look at him, “because…?”

“He didn’t ask for that,” Lily heard herself say, though she knew it couldn’t possibly help. Couldn’t possibly make her sound any more believable, when her voice was shaking that much. “He– it just happened. I was the one–”

“I’m sure he made you feel that way,” Sirius said, as his broom wobbled violently in through the bedroom door, knocking it wide open. “Let me guess: life debts?” Then, when Lily could only look at him, mute from a sudden, awful suspicion, he began to laugh. Wildly, almost hysterically, and more than loud enough that she half expected the waiting Aurors to react in some manner, for Captain Carver to ask, through a polite _Sonorous_ , if everything was all right up there.

“Life debts!” Sirius gasped, smacking his broom against his thigh. “The oldest trick in the book, and you fell for it!”

“He let me go, in November,” Lily said, in the hard, sure tone she’d so desperately needed earlier. “And, in school, that Christmas, before my parents– oh, you’re not even fucking listening, are you?”

“’Fraid not,” was the low, unsteady answer, followed by a a dark little chuckle. “You can save it, you know. I know how his sort think. I bet there even _is_ a real debt; he’d be daft to rely on anything less with someone like you, someone who’s only so soft.” Sirius, edging closer to the window, gave her a crooked little smile. “So, Lily, you needn’t look so bloody worried. I’m not going to go down there and kill him.”

_Not right away,_ was what that familiar, flat gaze meant. _Not yet._ And then he mounted his broom, shoved the window wide open and ducked right out of it, though it required a bit of a wriggle for him to get through the frame without scratching anything too badly. He flew down to where Evan was kneeling, dismounted, and then dragged Evan roughly onto his feet.

Lily watched, because she had to. Because they could see her watching, leaning a little way out the window as Sirius frog-marched Evan to the boundary of the wards, then surrendered him to Carver with a decided flourish of his free hand. Carver spoke quietly, pointing to Morrison and Bailey, who immediately took charge of Evan and Disapparated with a neatly synchronized pair of pops, taking him with them.

_Well,_ Lily told herself. _You did all you could for him._ But she didn’t really believe it; she couldn’t bring herself to do so. She knew she should move away from the window, knew that if she wanted to try to keep up appearances, she really should go downstairs and out the door to make conversation, or, failing that, to wave off Sirius and the remaining Aurors when they finally left.

She couldn’t bear to go out there. All she could see was the flat look in Sirius’ eyes, and hear him say _he needed you to_ take care _of him_. Which she had, in every way Sirius’ ugly tone had implied, and wasn’t that just the best sign of what he would think of her, if he ever took her at her word about how things had been with Evan. If he ever accepted that she’d chosen to let go the awful things Evan had done, had caused to be done to her, just for a little while.

_Maybe Sirius is right,_ she found herself thinking. _Maybe I’m– I’m potioned, or spelled, or some daft mix of both._ She didn’t like to think of the other option, that Evan had just been talking his way around her from the very start.

Four loud pops of apparition startled her out of her guilty, worried haze, drawing her attention back to the window, only for her to see that Sirius and Carver and the rest had gone.

Suddenly, she remembered what Evan had said to Sirius, so very decisively, before she’d tired of Sirius’ shouting and knocked him out. _If you leave this house–_ And of course it was now that she remembered, only now that she couldn’t do anything about it, save run downstairs and out onto the darkness of the lawn, tears streaming down her face, her chest a solid knot, her legs trembling.

“Mistress,” she heard Mimsy say, tearily, her small hands hot and tight around Lily’s wrists. “Mistress must come inside.”

“He’ll die,” Lily whispered, but she somehow found it in her to struggle back onto her feet, wincing at the pins and needles that attacked her, shivering at the sudden sharp bite of the wind. “They all die.”

“Mistress, please. _Please_ come in.” So Lily went, inch by inch, step by slow step, until she was inside again, and then upstairs in her bedroom, lying down fully dressed, the sheets about her still smelling faintly of Sirius’ sharp cologne and the weedy stink of the antidote she’d sprinkled about.

She slept, hoping that she would not dream.

* * *

She dreamt. Mostly about clouds with Evan’s face, Evan’s wicked smile, and lots of rain. In the dream, she found herself glaring up at them, or frowning, as she walked somewhere, wondering, all the while, why he must always be up above and looking down on her.

When she woke up, she crawled out from beneath the covers, blinking, rubbing at her aching eyes, only to see a fat, ostentatiously sealed letter from Alster & Merrywood on her bedside table. “Mimsy?” she croaked. “Mimsy?”

No response, so that meant snatching up the letter and opening it haphazardly as she made her way out the bedroom door and down the stairs, wincing at the lingering ache she felt in her feet. She couldn’t read the letter just yet. She didn’t dare to, not until she’d found out just how long it had been sitting. Which wouldn’t make any difference to how quickly she needed to respond to it, of course, but at least it would make her feel a little bit more in control.

Mimsy was not in the kitchen, or– and Lily hesitated, and called out first, that she was coming in, before carefully poking her head through the illusionary wall– in the hidden space in the pantry. Which was now stocked with a worn, but otherwise neat pair of bedrolls, each with a folded sheet and a small pillow on top. No elves there, though, so Lily pulled back and scrubbed at her eyes and went back out into the kitchen, and then, after pausing to summon her slippers from the living room and wrap up in James’ coat, out through the back door.

Ah. The shed door was closed, and Mimsy couldn’t be seen anywhere else in the garden, no matter how much Lily craned her neck this way and that as she picked her way toward the shed. She wasn’t at all alarmed now, just cross, fingering the corners of the letter that she’d jammed into one of the coat’s pockets, torn between the urge to go up to the shed and involve herself in whatever house elf drama Mimsy was perhaps trying to keep contained, and the urge to go back into the house and burn her lawyers’ letter without reading it.

“Buck up,” Lily told herself, half under her breath, fetching out the creased, heavy parchment sheaf with shaking fingers. “For all you know, they’re only telling you it’ll be a nasty fine for harbouring Evan, and maundering on about how to fight it.”

She sat, first, on the small bench in the herb corner. She breathed in the pungent mingled scents of the herbs around her. She pulled James’ coat tight and close about herself, and then forced her gaze down to the parchment she’d been avoiding looking at, unfolding the pages in careful sequence. Then, as she began to read the clearly marked first page: “You’ve got to be joking.”

In her careful, hand-wringing letter to Alster & Merrywood, she had mentioned the life debts she owed, and, knowing that her lawyers would prefer to have more information rather than less, had also gone on to roughly sketch out the circumstances that had led to the debts. Leaving out, of course, the fact that she and Evan had fucked like idiot rabbits for some months while they were in school; _that_ , she refused to tell anyone else until it became absolutely necessary. She hadn’t even said anything about it to Jemima at the time, other than some few careful hints, and– in the first, wild, terrifying month– a letter she’d charmed to automatically make its way to her friend if anything should go horribly wrong.

She’d burned that letter just a month later. She wanted to burn this one, now, this page especially, even though she knew it wouldn’t help, wouldn’t erase the horrifying, mortifying truth it had revealed.

_Sadly,_ Mr. Merrywood had written, his careful, flowing script lending beauty to his ugly words, _the matrimonial aspect of the law in question has not yet come off the books despite several legal challenges, the most recent of which took place in 1910. Life debts are uncommon at least partly for this reason; most established families deplore the connection it forces them to make with their less established peers, and generally respond to life debts in the strictly monetary sense, even when the life-price demanded is punitively high._

Mr. Merrywood then went on, in very apologetic, roundabout terms, to suggest that Lily steel herself against the possibility that marriage to a Rosier– any Rosier– might be unavoidable, or at least, might turn out to be distinctly the more prudent choice for a young heir in her position.

The unsaid implication being that the Rosiers would do their level best to drain dry the Potter accounts if she refused to marry one of them. No, wait, on the next page, Mrs. Alster took over, and laid out the series of arguments and statutes she was all but positive the Rosiers would try to use to do just that, to steal away the Potter fortune as just compensation for the implicit life-threatening risks the Rosier’s main heir had taken on Lily’s behalf.

The problem of the Ministry’s response to her having harboured Evan for any length of time occupied only half of the last page of the letter, and was roundly dismissed as any kind of concern. The life debts, Mrs. Alster said, her bold handwriting made even bolder by the emphatic press of her quill nib, took utmost precedence in such a situation. The Ministry would not press Lily at all, not on that particular score.

_No wonder,_ she thought, looking down at that last page. _No wonder the Aurors thought I was Imperiused._ As a strategy for getting into the Ministry alive and unharmed when you were a wanted and thoroughly despised breed of criminal, forcing your spell victim to babble about the life debt they owed to you wasn’t half bad. Especially if you were a son, no, an _heir_ of one of the sacred twenty-eight, and thus likely able to shrug off whatever fine or penalty existed for lying to the DMLE in the course of your arrest.

What she didn’t want to think about was the way Evan had proposed to her, his manner formal, yet so breathtakingly vulnerable that Lily knew she’d have hesitated to refuse him utterly, even if she’d wanted to.

_Would it greatly displease you,_ he had said, _if I were to offer for your hand…?_ And of course she’d thought he meant that he wanted her, and not also that he knew the debts that tied their families together would mean that her choices in the matter were so narrow as to be no choice at all.

All his hurried, intensely spoken words about why now, why now and why not back when they were in school… they had all rung so very true, and it had all been the purest sort of misdirection. He’d even made sure to reassure her that his family, their sole, terrifyingly presented obstacle, would no longer be an issue, not now.

If she wrote back now, right now, to tell her lawyers that Evan had offered to marry her, she had no doubt that their reply would be a very careful, very delicately phrased order to at least _appear_ to be considering his offer, if she could possibly stand to do it. Because to them, faced with a choice between losing nearly all of the Potter fortune and putting a smaller portion of it within the reach of a soon-to-be-imprisoned, and therefore legally incompetent Death Eater, there was only one sensible choice.

Lily rose abruptly, folding and crumpling the letter’s pages back into her coat pocket with shaking hands. She barely remembered her journey back into the house; she only really registered what was happening when she was closing and warding the door to the library the way she always did after her worse dreams.

She didn’t have a wand to hand, but she made do. The much-abused spell dummy shivered and split under the onslaught of her rage, rage she could only seem to give voice to in spells, in curses, in anything but fire. For she knew that if she bathed the dummy in flames, the house would catch too, starting with the few books in their carefully warded shelves, and ending, perhaps, with Mimsy and her smuggled elves, elves she had sacrificed and schemed to protect.

Once the dummy’s foam innards were exposed, there didn’t seem to be any point in continuing further. There was still rage left, inside her, but, Lily thought, chuckling bitterly, there was always going to be some bit of rage left, wasn’t there, when there was so very much in this pit of a world that she found infuriating.

And just like that, a solution dawned on her, beautiful in its uncompromising simplicity.

Her response to her lawyers’ long missive was only a few lines. _Calculate how much the estate can afford to part with, leaving aside the necessary fees to your good offices,_ she wrote, writing each word with loving care. _Better that I walk away without a single knut, rather than giving myself over. This is my final decision on this matter._

_Yours, Lady Potter._

The lines complete, Lily straightened away from the library desk, admiring the smooth, decisive whorls of her handwriting. It satisfied her, viciously, that she had the power to do this, the power to cast from her all the wealth that the Wizarding World so envied her.

“I’ll move,” she muttered, “with whatever’s left.” Mimsy, perhaps, could come along with her, bringing the escaped Malfoy elf and her child, perhaps all the way to Canada, Australia, or America; Lily would still be Lady Potter, but she wouldn’t be Lady Potter of enough that anyone would want to bother looking for her overseas for one reason or another.

Now, all she had to do was hunt down Orpheus again, and cajole him into flying off with her letter.


	8. grim dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late-ish again (-_-')
> 
> Note that the chapter surgery I warned about ended up not materializing. Warning for possibly lolarious lawyer dialogue and a somewhat uncertain, if not cliffhanger-y end. Otherwise, enjoy!

## grim dawn

The next morning saw Lily stepping carefully into the Ministry’s phone booth, her hair sharply styled, her crisp, semi-formal robes open over the smartest dress she had been able to dig up yesterday evening. Her papers were with her lawyers, who had so carefully, delicately tried to push back on everything she’d decided, right up until her final, vehement Floo call an hour before she’d gone digging in her wardrobe.

_Fuck decorum,_ she had said, distinctly. _Fuck what’s expected. They’ll take me as I come, or they can all go hang._

‘They’ being the Ministry arbitrator, and the Aurors, and the Rosiers’ lawyers, and Sirius, and anyone else who wanted to give her so much as a sideways look as she strolled up to get her shabby Potter wand checked.

Sirius especially, because she’d had to find out from Remus that he was alright, that he hadn’t come home last night solely because he was still in a massive strop with her, rather than off somewhere dying from grievous injuries he’d sustained on the hunt for Peter. Who hadn’t turned up, of course, or had only turned up enough to make sure to give all the Aurors after him a thorough bashing in the face. Which was, from the way Remus described it, at least four-tenths of the source of Sirius’ foul mood.

_I can imagine,_ Lily had said, smiling tightly, and had promptly changed the subject. Which had been easier than she’d thought it would be, what with the ongoing celebrations, the fireworks still apparently going off in London, the wild parties even Remus was seeing the occasional invite to.

_I haven’t bothered to go so far,_ Remus had said. _Honestly, it just doesn’t feel…_ Which Lily had nodded to, of course, and then gone on to make some approving noises about the idea of maybe getting together with some Order members to hold a more tasteful, only half-wild sort of thing, both celebration and memorial. And all the while she’d been unable to forget what she’d been doing for her own private, personal celebration the night before: getting bent over, so to speak, by a fucking Death Eater.

She hadn’t said anything about the situation with Evan, not to Remus. She’d known, even as she ignored opportunity after opportunity to confess, what it would make him think of her when he eventually found out the whole of it. When Sirius unbent enough to let things slip.

_You should have known,_ was all she could think, to herself, as she chose a dress. As she flooed Alster  & Merrywood. As she wrote a short, embarrassingly blotchy letter to Jemima. _You knew what he was, going into it, from the fucking start. You knew._

And yet…

“Lady Potter,” Mrs. Alster said, her low, smooth voice carrying a hint of sharpness. “If I may suggest one last thing…?”

Lily had drifted all the way through to this moment, past wand check, past the silent rendezvous with her frazzled lawyers, past the interminable-feeling ride down to Level Nine, past the even more interminable walk down to Level Ten. She and her lawyers, Mrs. Alster, Mr. Merrywood, and a very nervous-looking Ms. Merrywood, had been sitting for some time in rickety chairs in the draughty stone hallway outside of what looked to be nothing more, and nothing less than an actual dungeon cell, complete with a stout, thickly warded wooden door.

“Suggest away,” Lily muttered, thinking idly of how fast the door might catch fire if she potioned it. She hadn’t brought any sacs along, of course; she’d known not to tempt herself, especially when she did really mean to walk out of this awful meeting alive and free. “I’m all ears.”

“Ahem,” Mrs. Alster said, her disbelief clear in her tone, in the narrow gaze she directed over at Lily. “It is simply this: I propose that, whatever your aims, whatever your desired results, you let the Rosiers speak first. Let _them_ be the ones to make demands.”

“Their demands, you see,” Mr. Merrywood hastened to add, “will illustrate their priorities, and though we have a very good guess as to what those will be, there is absolutely nothing to lose by hearing them bluster and demand this or that before we make our own case.”

“And of course, there is the Ministry to consider,” Mrs. Alster said, as she’d said perhaps a dozen times yesterday. “The adjudicator wields a lot of influence over sentencing, if indirectly. If they perceive the Rosiers to be bullying, or perhaps just encroaching–”

The door opened with a long, loud creak, one that ended in an odd fizzing crackle. “Potter estate, and counsel?” someone called out, from just within. “So sorry for the delay, you know how these things run on; do come in, do come in.”

“Algie!” Mrs. Alster said, almost as soon as she skirted her way around the slightly shimmering door. “My god, you look positively ragged! Surely you haven’t been here all night?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” was the careless reply, said in a brisk, cheerful tone that was entirely at odds with the dreary surrounds. The speaker– Algie, Lily assumed– turned out to be a middle-aged man with sharp grey eyes and wispy, tousled brown hair, who clasped hands with Mrs. Alster and guided her through the doorway with the liquid, easy grace Lily recognized as part and parcel of The Pureblood Manner. “Dry for weeks and then the most _ghastly_ flood of… oh, good morning to you, Jacob, and er, Hester, is it?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Longbottom,” the nervous Ms. Merrywood said, from just behind Lily. “Have– have you had any word of how Alice is coping?”

Algie– Mr. Longbottom, to Lily, could only mean Frank’s father– wilted just a little. “She’s doing well enough, I’m told,” he said. “Under the circumstances.” His sharp grey gaze finally seemed to focus on Lily. “And you, miss…?”

“Potter,” Lily said, through slightly gritted teeth. Suddenly, she wished she’d opted for her only really formal pair of robes, the ones she’d worn to James’ funeral. Though probably it’d only have made her the pretty young pureblood thing this Algie Longbottom clearly didn’t recognize. _Lady Potter_ , she half wanted to add, except that it wasn’t as if that was going to mean very much after this blasted meeting. “Are we too early?”

“No, no, not at all,” was the immediate response. “If you’ll all take your seats, Mrs. Rosier and her lawyers will be along shortly. The fate of Rosier senior, you see, is also in the balance at this time, so as you can expect, things have been rather hectic.”

“Has Rosier senior also surrendered?” Mrs. Alster said, taking the seat directly opposite Algie’s. “I hadn’t heard he was involved.”

“Ministry business, Katherine,” Algie said, as he lowered himself back into his seat across from her. “Though if I were to engage in grossly unprofessional speculation…”

“Oh, you know we shan’t encourage you,” Mr. Merrywood said, from his position behind the chair he’d drawn out for Lily, “much as we would appreciate it if you did.”

“I suppose I’ll only say,” Algie said, smiling thinly, “that I feel a great deal of sympathy for Brutus Stratham at present. Or, more correctly, for the likely future state of his firm’s accounts. Stratham Nitchley is representing, hmm, let’s see, the Averys, the Notts, and the Macnairs, as well as the Rosiers.”

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Alster said. “The Notts as well?”

“Oh, yes,” Algie said, with obvious relish. “The Averys and the Rosiers, at least, should be well able to finance a full defence, but, as for the others…” The slightly smug cast to his features faded as soon as the cell door was opened again, this time by a bored, unfamiliar Auror whose only contribution was to nod curtly at Algie Longbottom, keep her hand on the shiny metal patch by the door handle as the Rosier delegation shuffled in, and then back out and let the door swing shut. “Mrs. Rosier, Mrs. Stratham, Ms. Hawley, pleasure to see you all once again. Shall we begin?”

“In a moment,” said Mrs. Rosier– for she could be no one else, with those familiar dark eyes and that unhurried, almost lazy walk, as if she thought the world had nothing better to do but to wait for her to stroll over to the empty seat to the left of Algie Longbottom, who of course duly rose to pull it out for her, an office she accepted with nary a flicker of expression. “This is only about the statement, isn’t it?”

“Yes ma’am,” the older lawyer accompanying her said immediately, having claimed the seat to Mrs. Rosier’s left. The last lawyer with her, a youngish, exhausted-looking woman that Lily would bet was Ms. Hawley, busied herself with dealing out closely written parchment scrolls, first to Mrs. Rosier, then to Algie Longbottom, and then floating copies over toward Lily’s side of the table. “If Lady Potter will be so good as to read our firm’s account regarding our reckoning of how best we judge that she might expunge her partial obligation to the Rosier family, on behalf of the heir…”

_Partial obligation?_ Lily thought, even as she bent in slightly, half for the ceremony of being seen to read the closely written parchment before her, and half because she really did want to read it, want to see precisely how much the Rosiers and their worried lawyers wanted to bleed her for. But a quick skim showed no numbers, no painstaking calculations, no mention at all of the heaviness of the burden of saving a life, nothing about a marriage, nothing about anything other than a very firmly phrased legal argument on how Lily’s careful arrangement of the Rosier heir’s safe surrender to the DMLE could not be viewed as a full expungement of the life debt she owed him.

‘The life debt’, it read, again and again and again, as if there were only one to speak of.

“This is preposterous,” Mrs. Alster said, from her position a chair down on Lily’s right. “Must we be crass enough to remind you, Mrs. Rosier, precisely what sort of criminal Lady Potter was forced to harbour?”

“‘Forced’?” Mrs. Stratham said, raising her eyebrows. “That’s rather strong.”

“Obliged, then,” Mr. Merrywood said. “Obliged to harbour a known associate of You-Know-Who, upon the most spurious of contexts–”

“A life debt,” Mrs. Stratham interjected, her tone still pointedly calm. “I’m sure you don’t mean to imply that the Potter estate holds those debts so cheaply.”

“If you had allowed my colleague to finish,” Mrs. Alster retorted, “you would understand that we are suggesting the precise opposite of that. As Mr. Rosier spared the life of Lady Potter some few months ago, so his own life was spared when he threw his person upon her mercy. Her conveyance of his person into Auror custody, and, in fact, her very generous concern, expressed to Auror-Captain Carver, that Mr. Rosier should come to no unjust harm in their custody, _that_ was all far more than he was morally entitled to.”

“Still,” Mrs. Stratham said, “that does not address her legal obligations to him, not fully. If you will refer to subsection three, the fifteenth paragraph on the scroll before you…”

Things went on in that fashion for something that felt like a whole hour, and was probably only half that. Lily listened as best as she could, admiring, despite herself, the unhurried calm of Mrs. Stratham in the face of the savage enthusiasm of Mrs. Alster and the offended fire of Mr. Merrywood. Buoyed by the sudden, if perhaps temporary reprieve of the Rosiers having decided to spontaneously ignore the existence of the second life debt she owed Evan, Lily’s lawyers were determined to argue every point vociferously, and would not rest until they had won concessions from the other side.

That those concessions all turned out to be some few slight, seemingly meaningless little changes to the drafted legal agreement that had been set before them didn’t seem to discourage them at all. As for the other side, while Mrs. Stratham was calm until the very last moment, Ms. Hawley fought to stay awake in her chair, and Mrs. Rosier stared off into space, clearly magnificently bored, and yet determined to be polite about it.

Lily couldn’t understand it at all. As the scrolls were collected up by a muttered spell from Algie, and then altered by a few lurid purple marks from his quill, the alteration duplicating itself across each copy seemingly automatically, all she could do was sit there, half-frozen, stuck somewhere between boredom and acute, irrational-feeling anxiety.

When prompted by Mr. Merrywood, Lily accepted the offered quill and signed her name to the very end of the agreement, watching dully as her signature was duplicated in a shining red ink. “Should you wish it,” Mr. Merrywood murmured, as Mrs. Alster and Mrs. Stratham both signed their copies, “you can very well absent yourself from all the rest of this, my lady. The character statement they requested on young Rosier’s behalf will take some time to hash out, and in any case there will be many opportunities to amend or even re-draft it before his trial begins, should you have any corrections or adjustments to request.”

“I’m all right here,” Lily murmured back, reflexively, and then wondered why that made Mrs. Rosier give her a brief, expressionless once-over. Surely there was nothing wrong, nothing improper in her wanting to stick around and see this whole blasted, nerve-racking process the whole way through? “Not that I don’t trust you all to handle it, it’s just that I’d simply rather, erm…”

“Understood, my lady,” Mr. Merrywood said, with a marked little bow of his grey head toward her, something Lily didn’t think she’d ever be used to. Then he returned his attention to the half-empty length of parchment on which Ms. Merrywood was dutifully scribbling down each new phrase that Mrs. Alster and Mrs. Stratham reluctantly agreed on, and Lily was once again at loose ends.

She wouldn’t even have to read the statement when it was presented before the court as part of Evan’s case. Her lawyers would read it into the record for her, as was proper. Signing a copy of the statement, and verbally attesting to the contents before a qualified Ministry official– Algie, in this case– would be the only real effort required of her.

She didn’t feel pleased, precisely, or even relieved, by this welcome turn of events, though she knew she should be. Instead, she felt deflated. Denied the chance to– to shout things, to bark out demands, to turn up her nose and storm out of the room while people called anxiously after her, all she could do was sit there and try to look vaguely interested as Ms. Hawley launched into a tentative, somewhat wordy explanation as to why the Rosier estate preferred that Lily’s statement say that Evan had ‘freely’ succoured her in a time of gravest need.

“‘Freely’,” Mrs. Alster said, her tone pointed, “adds a rather glowing cast to the thing. I find myself rather uncomfortable with it.”

“Even though it really was done freely, in the fullest sense of it?” Ms. Hawley said. “Willingly and readily, without compulsion?”

Lily, remembering how it had felt to look up at Evan, to look up at him and beg, all while knowing, deep down, that it might be useless, that it _would_ be useless, and that she would die there, whether surrounded by his gleeful fellows, or beneath him alone, sat up and cleared her throat. “Strike it,” she said. “Strike ‘freely’.”

No one said anything for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, hesitantly, with a glance over in Mrs. Stratham’s direction, Ms. Hawley drew a thick line through the word on her parchment. “All right,” she said, a little too loudly. “That sentence now reads–”

“Actually,” Lily said, edging her chair back from the table, “sorry to interrupt, but I think– if there isn’t anything else to work out, other than this statement, there are some visits I should be making.”

“Quite alright,” Mr. Merrywood said immediately, his tone just a little too cheerful. “If there _is_ anything else of import, my lady, we will inform you as soon as we can.” By placing a Floo call to Mimsy, he meant, since there hadn’t been time to buy and charm up the same sort of portable letterbox as Evan had made such thorough use of while he was with her; the exclusion warding alone would have taken up a whole day. “Please give Mrs. Longbottom our fondest regards.”

“And, if you would, mine also,” Algie said, wearily. “I’m quite sure I won’t be able to get away to Mungo’s for, oh, at least the next two days– you don’t mind taking a message for me, do you, my dear?”

If Lily had minded, she was sure Mrs. Alster’s pointedly encouraging smile would have convinced her that it would be hazardous to her health to so much as imply it. “Of course not,” Lily said, wishing she hadn’t said anything about visits, and only half-wishing Mr. Merrywood hadn’t chosen to try and curry favour with Algie Longbottom by bringing up Alice. “Will it be a note, or…?”

She _really_ didn’t like the narrow-eyed, almost mocking look Mrs. Rosier turned on her then; she disliked it almost as much as she disliked the way Algie smiled up at her and said that he shouldn’t really impose, and then, when she awkwardly insisted, go on to dig through his pockets for a letter-case and pen a short note on what looked like scorchingly expensive parchment, and _then_ seal the thing with a murmur and a decisive flick of his wand, which left behind a flat, smooth imprint of the Longbottom arms. Thankfully he didn’t see fit to offer the letter to her in a formal fashion, so she didn’t have to worry about accepting it properly, something James and Sirius had taught her two years ago in between fits of giggles, the week before her wedding day, just before their scheduled trip to sign the Ministry register.

_Silly as it is,_ James had said, after he had got Sirius to stop demonstrating random flourishes, _things like this really do matter, still._ And she had felt it, during that trip to the Registry, and been meanly satisfied at the almost insulting surprise on the face of the woman overseeing the signing ceremony, as she watched Lily stand and bow and receive the Potter family registry in full pomp and ceremony, flawlessly, though she ached inside with the urge to laugh. An urge she could almost no longer understand, just now, as she slipped out of the dungeon room, nodding automatically at the Auror that had opened the door for her.

She had laughed so much at James, that day. With him, then at him, at that innocently outraged look he’d loved to bolt on when he wanted to squeeze a little more out of a joke, a situation. She’d laughed so much that she felt as if she were made of it, floating in a sea of calm, silly contentment, away from all the stress and the fear that were her usual companions.

She’d known why, too, at the time, why she’d been almost dizzy with relief as they hustled off out of the Registry, James calling rude nonsense back as his fellow Aurors-in-Training whistled at their passage. She’d flushed, and giggled, and underneath it all she’d relaxed just a little, knowing this thing to be settled, to be _done_ , to be something that no one could easily take from her.

If only she had known.

Another sharp turn to the corridor loomed ahead, the final turn before the stairwell that would take her to the lift and back up into the main body of the Ministry. “The last turn, my lady,” Ms. Merrywood murmured, from a little way behind Lily. “As you exit the stairs, the lift will be on your right, and you’ll want level eight, for the Atrium.”

“Very good of you to see me out,” Lily muttered, though she’d known the way out, and could bloody well have stood to do her own navigation even if she’d been unsure of it. She’d assumed, at first, that Ms. Merrywood had followed her out of the room only because she’d had some other errand; she’d had to stifle a little jump when the other woman had started in with low murmurs of ‘left here, my lady’ and ‘straight on from here, my lady’. “I’ll be at home in an hour or so, at worst; I won’t be very long at Mungo’s, unless there’s some sort of crisis. If you could pass that on…?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

_Ma’am,_ Lily thought, suppressing the urge to shake her head. _And I’d swear she was older than me…_ Yet it was better than all the ‘my lady’-ing before, if only slightly better. “I hope it doesn’t go on for too much longer, back in there,” she found herself saying, just to have something to say. “For Hawley’s sake, if nothing else; she looked like she was about to keel over.”

“She didn’t– I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I do know her, and I feel compelled to say that she wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, insisting on that last point,” Ms. Merrywood said, her tone carefully emphatic. “It’s, I know the way it must have sounded, but I’m certain that it wasn’t meant to be personally distressing to your ladyship.”

Lily blinked. Opened her mouth, and then shut it, hastily, because she could feel a deeply inappropriate chuckle trying to start. _Thank goodness,_ she thought, as they rounded the corner in a brief, excruciatingly awkward silence, _thank goodness we’re almost at the stairs, and I can be shut of this._ “I was only,” she said, trying not to sound too wry, “making a point about how tired she looked, and how the whole of this must be tiring to deal with. Really, if I’d thought she was trying to personally distress me, I wouldn’t have…”

What _was_ that strange, rhythmic sound, mixed in with the familiar heavy-booted stomp of people coming down stairs, that was so clearly filtering out through the door into the stairwell just ahead? Lily didn’t know that she’d stopped, or even that she’d drawn her wand, until she felt as much as saw Ms. Merrywood come forward, hovering uncertainly on her right.

“Ma’am,” Ms. Merrywood said, soothingly, “it’s only a prisoner, someone that’s probably on their way down to be interviewed, or perhaps to meet their lawyer. There’s no need to have your wand out, the Aurors are always with them.”

_‘Ma’am’ again,_ Lily thought, _though she sounds like she’s talking to someone half her age, now. Someone half her age, and hysterical._ Still, she heard the sense in what had been said, and so managed to force herself to dial down, to slide the wand back into her pocket. And even after doing all that, she simply couldn’t bring herself to do any more than walk a few steps forward, and wait, carefully positioned to the left of the stairwell’s open door, her hands deliberately visible, so as not to alarm the Auror that would likely come through first. There was no way she was setting foot in that stairwell, not without knowledge of who exactly was being escorted through it. No way.

Thankfully, Ms. Merrywood seemed to understand that, or, more precisely, understand that putting away her wand and waiting patiently was as much as Lily was prepared to do to not look hysterically afraid, and she settled into a position between Lily and the doorway without any fuss. The strange, rattling, ringing sound continued, leading Lily to imagine loops and loops of chains wrapped around some hooded prisoner, dripping down their arms, dragging and rattling their way down the steps like the train of a particularly obnoxious dress.

Which meant that she was thinking of what precisely a dress made of chains would look like, when Auror Morrison stepped out into view, her watchful gaze snagging first on Ms. Merrywood, and then settling on Lily and sticking there, her dark eyebrows lowering into a frown. “Lady Potter,” she said, holding up a quelling hand toward the stairwell, presumably at the other Auror in there. “Leaving an appointment, I assume?”

“Yes,” Lily said, “with my lawyer.” When she waved vaguely in Ms. Merrywood’s direction, the infernal woman bowed to Auror Morrison, actually bowed, the stupid precise little formal bow that meant some sort of brief introduction was required. “Auror Morrison, Ms. Merrywood of Alster and Merrywood; the other lawyers are stuck back in there somewhere, wrangling with the adjudicator.”

“Ah,” Morrison said, after exchanging acknowledging nods with Ms. Merrywood. “Thought it might be something like that. Did Auror Tiffin say to meet us?”

“Oh, no, I’m, _I’m_ escaping, since they’re down to hashing out the tiny details,” Lily said. “I don’t think the Auror we saw as we left said anything, though. Ms. Merrywood, did you hear anything I missed?”

“No, ma’am,” was the thankfully firm answer. “And I believe that was Auror Dietrich, that held the door for us. She’s my aunt, so…”

“Right,” Morrison said, pleasantly enough, though her frown remained. “If you’ll just step back, Lady Potter, and give us a moment, we’ll be right out of your way.”

By ‘step back’, she meant for them to shuffle back a decent length and stay there, as she put herself in the same position Ms. Merrywood had been so nervously occupying moments ago: right smack between Lily and whoever was exiting the stairwell. Except, of course, for the fact that Ms. Merrywood was not an Auror, and didn’t hold her wand hand slightly away from her side, curled into the instinctual claw grip of someone ready to have her wand drop out of her holster and into her hand at any moment.

Once Morrison had motioned them off and stepped into her position, the dragging sound of the chains immediately resumed. Lily would have been amused at the Auror’s caution in any other situation; however, considering the probable identity of whoever might have been waiting in chains in the stairwell, Lily could only feel flattered and tense. Fear, yes, just a bit of that, because it was instinctual, because waiting for a Death Eater to walk by had only become worrying rather than dangerous two or three days ago, but other than that…

When she saw Evan walk out instead, all her fear and flattered tension drained away, replaced by an instantaneous, unreasonable rage. She saw, behind him, the watchful look on Auror Bailey’s familiar, condescending face, and so she somehow reeled in her temper, sat on it as hard as she could, and dredged up a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you again so soon, Mr. Rosier,” she said, in a tone that, to her ear, sounded almost friendly. “Everything going well?”

Probably, she’d overdone it; Morrison’s frown was gone now, but in its place was a flat, calm look Lily recognized as The Auror Assessment, i.e. the look that went with– that had used to go with James’ playful, writing-this-down-slowly monotone. E.g. ‘at that time I conducted an assessment and judged the current situation to be approaching crisis, and therefore in urgent need of bombardment with flame and stone’.

“Oh, it’s going well enough,” Evan said, somehow managing to come to a shuffling, rattling stop and make the whole thing look dignified, “my dear Lady Potter,” and his brief, simple bow was no less theatrical, no less studied. “And Ms. Merrywood, I always count it a pleasure, no matter how brief, to be introduced to a lady; well met.”

“Come along,” Morrison said, very calmly, once he’d bestowed another pointed bow on the wide-eyed Ms. Merrywood. “Lady Potter, if you’ll excuse us…?”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Lily said, though she knew the fact that she had subtly shifted to block their progress must be making poor Morrison worry that she might just be tempted to try and do that. “It’d be an awful waste, and it’d only make my lawyers very cross, considering how hard they worked to get me out of owing any debt to his family. I’ve only got a question for him, it’s very simple, very brief. May I?”

“Ma’am,” Ms. Merrywood whispered, “I really, _really_ recommend–”

“It’s not a legal question,” Lily said, cutting her off. “It’s personal. Auror Morrison, Auror Bailey, may I?”

“Ask,” Evan said, in the kind of tone that could have worn away mountains. In the kind of tone that said that he would do anything to have her ask what she would, and that if he died as a result, he would hold no one but himself responsible, and woe betide anyone that saw fit to interfere. “Ask, my lady.”

Morrison gave Evan and his earnest, implacable expression a long, hard, narrow-eyed look, then sighed audibly, exchanging a brief, speaking glance with Bailey. When she finally returned her hard gaze to Lily, she was frowning again, but she nodded, all the same. “We do need to get on,” she murmured. “Keep it brief.” And she took a deliberate, carefully measured step to the side, _not_ entirely out of the way, a step that was more of a cordial gesture than an attempt to allow Lily to talk to Evan in private.

Bailey’s step away was more of a slight shuffle than anything; Ms. Merrywood’s step was small enough that she might as well just have stayed in place. Evan was the only one that didn’t move, that simply stood there, his head bowed forward, his earnest gaze fixed on her, as if nothing else mattered. As if he weren’t in chains; as if he couldn’t see that she was burning from the inside out with thwarted rage. Or– for his gaze was turning wary now– as if he could see how she felt, but couldn’t even begin to understand the reason why.

_He can’t know yet,_ Lily thought. _He can’t know that Sirius is still alive._

“Evan,” she said, carefully, her tone empty of everything but calm determination, “when you spoke–” to _me_ , she wanted to say, but didn’t, since it wouldn’t suggest the right thing to Evan, wouldn’t make him think of his dubious prophecy, “when you talked to Sirius in my attic,” and even as she shaped the words, she could see the way Evan stilled, “did you lie?”

“On blood and breath,” he said, “no.” He started to move his bound hands up and apart, then winced, stopping, his expression souring as he looked down at them. “As I would fully swear,” he muttered, “if I could.”

The worst thing, the very worst thing about all this was how horribly sincere Evan had always seemed to be, to Lily. Even though she knew he lied, even though she’d seen enough of his various faces that she knew he _did_ lie, whenever he spoke to her, she always found herself wanting to believe him. Wanting to believe that she and she alone could see the truth in him.

Right here, right now, she found herself almost believing him, even though it had been proved to her by that mortifying, terrifying letter from her lawyers that he had not told her all of the truth. Looking at him, she could easily imagine how he might explain away that little slip. _I never planned to claim the second debt,_ he’d say, his gaze burning into her. _I never would have done that to you, tried to tie you to me against your will, not after everything I’ve already done._

And, as for the fact that Sirius had gone out into the world well before Evan’s prophesied deadline and had stubbornly gone on living… Lily closed her eyes for a brief moment, strangling the awful impulse to ask, to dig, to demand more horribly credible answers she would only have to tell herself to disbelieve.

“Right,” she finally managed to say, and felt a hot lance of satisfaction go through her when Evan looked back up, at the way his expression froze as he saw her careful, politely distant smile. “Well. Thank you for answering.”

“I should add,” Evan said, hurriedly, “that what I spoke of, it– regarding the topic we spoke of, it’s often difficult for me to be as precise as I would wish, which is why I don’t often–”

“I heard you the first time,” Lily said, shaking her head, struggling to keep her tone gentle. Distant and gentle and polite. “There’s no need to go on.” She turned back toward Morrison then, her gaze as level and apologetic as she could make it. “So sorry for holding you up, Auror Morrison.”

“No trouble,” was the equally level response, though the look that Lily got as she quietly shifted well out of Evan’s way was anything but; probably, Morrison was all now wondering what sort of false assurances and promises Evan had made to save his own skin, and was perhaps now regretting. Auror Bailey, as he took firmer hold of Evan’s shoulder and nudged him forward, looked like he was wondering the same thing, as did Ms. Merrywood, who was now standing half-in and half-out of the stairwell entrance, and looking caught between feeling vast relief that no life debts had been mentioned and anxious worry that Lily might forget herself and try to mention them anyway as some sort of pyrrhic parting shot.

“Good luck with your hearings,” Lily said, in Evan’s direction, half to see Ms. Merrywood tense up again, and half to see the way Evan stiffened. “I’m sure you know you’ll have to do a much better job with them.” And then she swept into the stairwell with her nose held high, all her hurt and her rage briefly, gloriously transmuted into vicious, tearful satisfaction, fuelling her with the energy to head up the stairs at a nice, pleasing clip.

Two turns up, she slowed, suddenly realizing that Ms. Merrywood was indeed huffing up after her, determined to follow her all the way up. “You needn’t come all the way,” Lily said, blinking hard, half amused and half chagrined that she’d forgotten. “I know my way out from here.”

“Uncle Simon would have my arse,” Ms. Merrywood said, unsteadily, “pardon my language, if I left your ladyship anywhere other than at the Floo, whistling off to Mungo’s. Not at all proper.”

“I suppose I can’t argue that,” Lily said, forcing a smile. “Not after how I left things, down there, with him.” She took a pause to think, to master her slightly shaky voice, so that the next thing she said would come out casual and calm. “Do you think– I mean, regarding the legal question I would never have asked, d’you think there’s a chance he might bring it up again in public, just out of spite?”

Ms. Merrywood, who had now caught up, and was doing her determined best to match Lily’s slower pace, gave her a pointed, reproaching look that was an answer in and of itself. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but, as Mrs. Alster likes to say, there’s no room for spite in these sorts of dealings unless you’re prepared to get it thrown right back at you. I will say,” she added, “that it would not be in his best interest to try for another round of debt reckoning, but…”

“Spite for spite,” Lily murmured, nodding, now thinking of the way Evan’s eyes had widened when he saw how utterly she appeared to disbelieve him and his tales of the future. When he realized, as he must, what that disbelief must mean for his chances with her. “I do understand.” Somehow, all her angry dread and her fevered anticipation of how ugly the fight would get when Evan’s lawyers tried to assert his right to marry her, somehow, all of that had faded away. In its place was a sort of formless heaviness, a feeling that tightened her throat and made tears start in her eyes.

She’d told herself, last night, as she brooded before bed, that if the worst should happen, if the tangled state of the law somehow trapped her into an unwilling marriage with Evan, she wouldn’t be entirely powerless. Yes, he would have forced her to the altar, but then she would be married to him, and him to _her_.

Her, that had burned down Malfoy Manor with potions alone. Much as Evan didn’t know that– **couldn’t** _know that,_ she reminded himself, _just the way he didn’t know it was Peter who betrayed us, until I bloody well told him_ – he would not have forgotten her skill with potions. Lily could smile and nod at everything he said for the next ten years, and he’d still have to live in fear for all that time, fear that the next mouthful or the next sip or the next touch or the next breath of the wrong thing might be his end, and her revenge.

Now, that cherished dream of revenge failed to comfort her. She could not imagine the Evan she’d seen, down there, liar and schemer that he was, being stupid enough to put himself so thoroughly in her power.

Eventually, they reached the lift, and took it up a level. Eventually, Ms. Merrywood followed Lily through the Atrium, around the hideous fountain, over to the vast, busy fireplaces lining the left wall. “Afternoon, Lady Potter,” she said, as Lily stepped into the flames, and from the slightly worried look on her face, it had been at least a _bit_ obvious what sort of mood Lily was currently in. “Please give our best to Alice.”

For answer, Lily forced herself to smile and nod at her, over her shoulder. “St. Mungo’s,” she called out, and gave herself up to flame.

* * *

Lily did not marinate in the endless, angry betrayal of that day, not forever. There was too much in the way of distraction, from awkward picnics with the near-silent Alice and the burbling Neville, to the surprisingly strong pleasure of being able to pop down Diagon Alley for whatever she fancied without glamouring herself. She wrote to Jemima. She went, half-ready to be bored out of her gourd, to the tea party that Georgie had so tentatively invited her, and found it not an entire ordeal.

And then of course, there were the trials. Severus’ trial, astonishing as it had been to see Dumbledore himself rising to read out a personal statement of support, had not substantially differed from the rest of them, the relentless, monotonous stream of them. Lily had watched, in various moods, the shifty-eyed or stone-faced or vaguely apologetic-looking Death Eaters and Death Eater supporters giving vent, over and over, to the universal cry of how it all had been a great, vicious mistake.

They had been put under the Imperius, or their mothers had been threatened, or their infant heirs, or their beloved cousins. Or, perhaps, it had been their own skins on the line, and between certain death and the horror of working to Lord Voldemort’s great plan, there hadn’t really seemed a choice. Some of them had simply kept their heads down and toughed it out, and some had tried to grant their victims what mercy remained to them, but for the most part, they had all done as they were told.

The worst of it, of course, was that they weren’t all lying; they couldn’t be. Voldemort, or his true followers, had threatened and cowed those who they could not outright turn, and those who didn’t obey quickly enough, or stood up to threats, or worse, acted in any way against Voldemort, well, if they were extremely lucky, they managed to retreat abroad or otherwise lay low. If they were less lucky, their houses smouldered beneath the Dark Mark, and no one had ever heard from them again, marking them as one more example of what not to do.

Still, there were some that embroidered more than most. Lucius Malfoy, for one, who, undaunted by even the slightest shred of conscience or qualms, would have had the Wizengamot believe that he had laboured under threat at every step of his illustrious career as one of Voldemort’s most feared servants. They were all exhorted to believe the fact that not only had his father, Abraxas, lain down the first Imperius, but that when Abraxas was murdered by Voldemort himself– “on a vicious whim”, his barrister said, straight-faced– Lord Voldemort had then proceeded to bind Lucius to him with an even stronger Imperius.

“Almost have to admire him,” Alice had murmured from beside Lily, as Lucius’ lawyer brought his colourful tale to a winding close. “You have to admit, he’s the only one that’s had the gall to have not one, but _two_ secret Imperiuses cast on him.”

Evan’s hearing, which came after Nott’s and before Rowle’s, was unexpectedly sober, in comparison. To the mountainous heap of charges, ranging from ‘Aggravated and Wilful Disturbance of the Peace’ to ‘Aggravated and Unwelcome Interference with a Line of Trade’ to ‘Murder Moste Foule’, he pleaded guilty.

Just that: guilty. From the low sighs and disgruntled murmurs of the crowd that filled the courtroom, they had been hoping for more in the vein of the theatrics employed by the Malfoys. Lily, who had been at least half-expecting _something_ to happen that was out of the ordinary, found herself so seized with anxious emotion that she could not sit still, even though each additional statement read into the record by the preternaturally calm Mrs. Stratham only suggested that the crowd and the reporters were all going to continue to remain bored and restive so long as Evan’s trial continued.

“Need a break?” Remus whispered, only for Lily to shake her head and force a smile, and then be forced to sit agonizingly still and breathe calmly, because now she’d remembered that not only did she have to _look_ calm for Alice, she had to _be_ calm, or Remus would listen to her racing heart and wonder what was wrong. “If you’re worrying about leaving early, you really shouldn’t; I don’t think half these people are going to sit all the way through this.”

He was right, too: fifteen minutes later, halfway through the fourteenth corroborating statement read by Mrs. Stratham of the fact that yet another person presumed dead at Evan’s hands had been conclusively proved to be firmly among the living, two older witches a few rows ahead rose to their feet, backs hunched, making low, frequent apologies as they eased their way toward the gap in the benches that would lead them to the back of the cavernous amphitheatre that served as the courtroom.

Ten minutes after that, a whole party directly at the front of the public section got up and made their way out as well, apologizing even more loudly. By that time, there was hardly any need for it, as the murmurs and whispers of the badly bored crowd now provided a continuous counterpoint to Stratham & Nitchley’s droning defence of their client.

If the Potter statement was mentioned at any point, Lily failed to hear it. Beside her, Alice yawned and stretched in her seat, muttering to herself about the utter madness of any Death Eater, or indeed anyone in a similar sort of secret society, trusting that any of their peers would not all rush to divulge anything and everything they knew or could reasonably guess about their compatriots in order to save their own skins when the Aurors took them.

“Oh?” Lily said, careful to sound vaguely surprised. “You mean you think _he’s_ selling them out?”

“Has to have done,” Alice said, emphatically. “Look at his lawyer, the older woman; not a bit worried, not being interrupted by the clerk, or by anyone, really, and you know why? Everyone knows what he’s done, or what he’s claiming he’s done. They’ll fine him, and he’ll do a few months, maybe half a year, and they’ll let him get away with it because he’s likely peached on everyone he could think of, and maybe a few more.”

“But,” Lily said, “but he’s…” Most of the names read out of the list of his charges had not turned up proved as miraculously living, and it had been a decently long list. And one or two names she even knew, or recognized as some relation to someone she’d gone to school with. “They can’t just let him off.”

Alice snorted. “They will,” she said, lowly. “Though with him, it’s not _quite_ as galling. Sirius told me they all but squeezed him dry for information. Made him earn it.”

_Or so they think,_ Lily thought, unable to shake the memory of all the various honest faces Evan had shown to her. She’d thought she’d known what she was getting into, with him; look how that had turned out. But there was no point in saying anything, no point in maintaining her quiet outrage, not when Alice and Remus were arguing in cheerful whispers, half about whether it was worth staying on any longer, and then about whether they should all wait until a recess was called before they moved to leave.

“You know it’s the done thing,” Remus murmured. “And you know they’ll all– you know there’s _Prophet_ writers camped up front _and_ in the hallway, bored as anything, hungry for the least little bit of bullshit they can work up into an article…”

“So me and Lily’ll cloak,” was Alice’s response. “And you, you know you’re much taller than both of us–”

“I am _not_.”

“–or wider, anyway. You’ll go out first, I’ll Disillusion, Lily can, I don’t know, do the same, or put on a glamour or something, and then we’ll sneak past.”

“And that wouldn’t be suspicious at all,” Lily couldn’t help but say, dryly. “And then we’d both make the news for being arrested at the Rosier trial for, disturbing the peace, or giving whoever’s on duty a heart attack–”

“Oh, it’s Toby on duty, fuck him,” Alice muttered. “Took all my fucking shifts.”

“ _Given_ your shifts,” Lily murmured, exchanging a brief look with Remus. When Alice, as usual, only deigned to sniff in response to that, Lily smiled, straightening in her chair. “Alright, so here’s how it is. Alice cloaks. Remus, you and I go arm-in-arm, and we stop with Grace Wyckerley, if she’s out there–”

“Witch Weekly?” Alice interjected. “Am I really hearing this?”

“She’s got a soft spot for, you know, us young, tragic war widows. She’ll be nice.”

“Patronizing.”

“But still nice,” Lily insisted. “I’ll tell her I’m, you know, certain the court will come to the right decision, etcetera, wished I could have stayed longer, I’ve visits to make, lovely to talk to you, goodbye.”

“If you’re really lucky,” Remus murmured, with a teasing look at Alice, “they’ll all think you’re locked up down here until they come in tomorrow, and they realize they don’t see you.”

In the end, there was no need for their haphazardly planned escape; a moment after Remus’ terrible joke, Mrs. Stratham paused in her droning recital of charges, and the court clerk struggled up to his feet to signal a brief recess, his wavering voice nearly drowned out by the sound of people hustling to their feet and sighing or exclaiming in relief at this end to their torment.

On her way out, Lily tried to force her attention to remain where it was, to where it by all rights should have been: on her muttering, laughing friends, who were now caught up in an unnecessarily spirited argument over which pub to adjourn to for lunch. But, as she approached the courtroom exit, she could not help herself; she found herself hanging back and looking this way and that, as if idle, and distracted.

As if she weren’t trying for a glimpse of Evan in chains, Evan in that ghastly chair before the full might of the Wizengamot, Evan laid low but looking not at all as if he felt it, sitting up straight-backed and unwavering, his expression distant.

He was looking at her, when the crowd between them parted. With the way his chair was positioned, he was only just able to look directly at her, and probably it only seemed as if he were watching the departing crowd. And perhaps that was what he was really doing, and Lily only imagined that his dark gaze was fixed on her, watching her as she slowly turned and walked away.

_It’s all over between us,_ she told herself, when she was finally through the doors, and there was stone and wood and all the noisy bulk of the crowd between her and Evan Rosier’s dark, unreadable gaze. _It’s over._

She did not believe it.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More stories in this universe to come. I've already added this story to the series that everything will be slotted into, so you can subscribe to it if you're interested in further updates.
> 
> I'm currently entering into an extremely busy/haphazard RL period, so the only thing you should count on seeing added to the series over the next couple weeks is one Peter-centric short story.

**Author's Note:**

>  ****  
>  _More specific (and spoilery) warnings start here_  
>   
> 
>  **Specific character death warning, for deaths that are dwelt on:** James Potter and Frank Longbottom.
> 
>  **Less specific character death warning, for deaths that are not strongly dwelled on:** many characters die in the first war in canon, and most of those characters die here as well. 
> 
> **Main location of the noncon (both Lily/Rosier and Lily/others)** is in chapter two, with major flashbacks, memories, and coping concentrated in chapter three and chapter six.
> 
>  **If you want to know where all the Lily/Rosier ends up:** the overall arc of their relationship is fucked up and weird, and ends on a mixed note in this story.


End file.
